


The MCU Files

by AcidAngel21



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The X-Files
Genre: Alien Abduction, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Anti-Sokovia Accords, Anything you can do Shuri does better, Assassins & Hitmen, BAMF Dana Scully, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Byers knows spies, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Comics Monica Rambaeu instead of MCU Carol Danvers, Dana Scully is so done, Deaf Clint Barton, Everyone Needs A Hug, Ex-S.H.I.E.L.D.!Byers, Fox Mulder wants the truth, Frohike knows people, Gaslighting, Genius Shuri (Marvel), HYDRA and the Syndicate are the same thing, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Human Experimentation, Immortal Scully, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insomnia, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Jewish Fox Mulder, Jewish Pietro Maximoff, Jewish Wanda Maximoff, Langly Has Issues, Marvel has invaded the X Files, Mind Control, Multi, Mutant!Langly, Mutant!Mulder, Natasha Romanov Has Feelings, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Avengers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Romani Pietro Maximoff, Romani Wanda Maximoff, Russian!Langly, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Specifically for the X Files, Starvation, Sweet T'Challa (Marvel), Syndicate (X-Files), T'Challa (Marvel) Is a Good Bro, Thaddeus Ross is an awful human being, The Lone Gunmen Know All, Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Winter Soldier typical warnings, alexander pierce is a dick, but not major character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2020-07-11 14:24:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19929532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcidAngel21/pseuds/AcidAngel21
Summary: The X Files have hosted a number of phenomena and strange occurrences. S.H.I.E.L.D. may have the official claim to all the strange things that plague Earth, but inter-agency co-operation is a necessary evil sometimes. As the world gets stranger and stranger and backs get stabbed more and more often, Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully get dragged (or dive into the deep end) into the world of gods and aliens, mutants and miracles, syndicates and conspiracies. The more they dig, the deeper it all goes. Between the public and the darkness stands the bridge of Unofficial Bureaucracy and the People that keep it all together by the skin of their teeth and their blood, sweat, and tears.The rules are simple: Trust no one, trust nothing, keep your eyes open, keep your secrets close, and assume nothing is sacred, because nothing is.





	1. Prologue: File X-32557038

**Author's Note:**

> (As a warning, the prologue is a relatively detailed account of a HYDRA Trash Party that includes non-detailed description of starvation, brainwashing, and canon-typical treatment of the Winter Soldier from an outsider perspective. Essentially, dead dove, do not eat. This is mostly just to establish the MCU timeline, as well as to show the change in hands regarding who has access to what information. It is not necessary to read anything but the italics.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to be a longform, extended project running the length of x files and mcu canon. I'm going to be playing fast and loose with both and will be pulling from the comics to fill in certain gaps on occasion. That said, I am not, by any means, an expert in any of the comics at all. I merely have a devotion to the mcu (even if I think there are some issues in how the story went with the most recent additions), and a most-definitely healthy addiction to the X Files, which I'm still working my way through at the time of writing the first few chapters. The plan is to take this through to at least I Want to Believe, and possibly Endgame, depending on how far off of canon I get. This will be centered around Mulder and Scully, but I'm going to feature The Lone Gunmen and Thor relatively frequently. Bucky Barnes will also be making frequent appearances because dammit, the man deserves better.
> 
> The tags are not yet complete, and this includes the character tags as well. I will be tagging as I go, and I will try to remember to give additional warnings at the beginning of the chapters, but I will make mistakes along the way. If you see something, say something. That said, I will be delving into the dark parts of the canon. This includes the Red Room, HYDRA being manipulative garbage, the Syndicate being manipulative garbage, and all the canon typical pieces of trash. This is not a Sokovia Accords friendly work. That whole thing was rotten to the core, and the only way to fix them was to scrap them and start over. I am not Team Iron Man or Team Cap. I am firmly in the camp of Team They Should've Talked Like Adults.
> 
> That all said (and if you've read this far, thank you; I promise, I'm almost done), I'd like to thank my beta for kicking my butt and making my grammar and writing better than I could ever get it by myself. This may still be a pile of literary trash; but thanks to you, it's not a raging dumpster fire of literary trash. Any mistakes, inconsistencies, or errors are all mine. If you see any mistakes or anything that sticks out, please let me know. I'd ask that when you do so, to please keep it respectful.
> 
> So, all of that out of the way, welcome to The MCU Files.
> 
> The Truth Is Out There

FBI/SSR S.H.I.E.L.D. File X-32557038

_This is a transcript of a statement given by a witness who shall remain nameless for their own protection. Currently, this is the only record available of this phenomenon. This file will only be made available only to the highest authorities in the FBI and agents of Level 7 or higher clearance within the SSR/S.H.I.E.L.D. There is currently no evidence to either confirm, or deny the statement given by this individual. If any questions arise, they may be directed to the offices of J. Edgar Hoover or Margaret Carter. Do not attempt to interview any of the individuals mentioned in the file or any of their associates. If this file is released to the public, given to the press, or discussed with individuals without proper clearance either in part or in its entirety, the individual who released it will be held indefinitely without trial, legal council, or chance for parole._

_The transcription is as follows:_

It was about midday on- I think, October 20 th . What year? 1961. I was undercover. We know the Russians have a program of some sort running over there, or at least we did. I’m fluent, you see, so I was really one of the only choices who could’ve- … Why was I there that day? I’d finally gotten the clearance I was looking for and got called in by Vasily Karpov. Aleksander Lukin was also in attendance. We were in Ukraine. I had no idea what he wanted me for, but when Karpov called, you came running, or you paid for it, so I came. We took an elevator down below Kiev and arrived into this massive underground network that I strongly believe ran and still runs under the entire city, or at least most of it. He took both of us to this room that had more technicians than I’ve ever seen in one place before, and this chair, this horrific looking chair with this contraption that was shaped like some sort of helmet on arms above it. There were wires that ran over the walls and across the floor, and all of them were hooked into that helmet. 

Karpov starting talking about the various programs that were using that technology. And the things he said. I have a high enough clearance to be aware of MK-ULTRA and all the other things that the West has been doing. But he was talking about complete and total control of a person. Of any person. Not just people brainwashed from childhood, but any person at all; regardless of their strength of will or spirit, their identity, or what they stood for. He must’ve wanted to make an impression. I’ll admit, I didn’t believe it. I knew my work was dangerous, but I didn’t think anything like that was possible, even with knowing about the Tesseract and the Roswell Incident.

Either way, the person he brought in. The man he brought in. I don’t even know if I could’ve called him a man anymore. He acted more like those machines in those dime pulp novels about science fiction. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, it would’ve been easier to believe that’s what he was. This is going to sound like I belong in Letchworth or Bellevue, but I swear, I’m still sane. The man they brought in was Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. The Howling Commando. Don’t look at me like that! I saw more than enough of his face when I was a kid to recognize him, even with how emaciated he was. He was incredibly malnourished. He was practically skin, bones, and connective tissue and almost nothing else. Karpov was talking about punishment for some infraction or other and Lukin just looked really fascinated by some chart a technician had handed him.

Anyway, they threw him in the chair, and proceeded to…proceeded to…I don’t know what to call it. I’ve heard of Electroshock Therapy in the asylums, but this seemed like they were trying to electrocute him. He was screaming around this rubber guard they put in his mouth, and he couldn’t even move properly with how badly they’d starved him. I didn’t even mention how his entire body was bent to the left. Why? Didn’t I remember to mention? No, I guess I…He had a metal arm. His left arm was completely gone, and in its place was this silver looking monstrosity that had a red star on the shoulder. It was probably a Soviet marker, or something like that. It was obviously heavy, with how bent over he was. While they were doing whatever it was that damned chair was made for, Karpov started reading these words. The only ones I can really remember are “longing, one,” and “freight car” and then it was like he really was one of those machines. The look on Karpov’s face. The man is sick. Lukin is the same.

That’s who the Russians have been using. I’m more certain of it than I’ve been of anything else in my entire career. That’s their spook. That’s the man they’ve sent after all those people that’ve gotten killed in the union and over here. I know we pretend that- I know it’s just a story. But, after what I’ve seen. Listen to me, you have to believe me! The Winter Soldier isn’t a myth, or a legend, or anything else like that. He’s real, and he’s James Barnes, he’s someone who looks a lot like him, or the Syndicate has gotten a lot further with their cloning program than they were ever supposed to. I wish I could’ve helped him, or saved him, or done anything at all, but I don’t think there was anyone in there to help or save anymore. I think whatever or whoever that was died as soon as the Russians got a hold of him, and he’s just a revenant now.

This is the last mission I’m ever going to take. I’m going to ground after this. Leave my name out of the record and bury me under paperwork. Maybe I’ll be able to live for a few more good years before I get found by someone I don’t want to see.

_As there is no proper resolution to this case or the relevant mission, it is to be qualified as unsolved and left to the U-class files. The individual whose statement is held within is to be erased from all relevant files, government services, and identifying registrations. Given the content of their testimony, it is impossible to say what truly happened in that station under Kiev on October 20_ _ th _ _, 1961. Further inquiry is to be made into the Syndicate cloning program in order to ascertain whether or not one of their specimens would be viable for such activities._

_January 18_ _ th _ _, 1991 Addendum: File X-32557038 is now classified under the X Files due to the unusual and unnatural nature of the testimony given. X-32557038 is still considered highly classified. If any questions arise about the contents within or the reason for reclassification, questions may be directed to the offices of Alexander Pierce or Remus Strauss. All aforementioned consequences for sharing the contents of X-32557038 with any individuals without sufficient clearance still apply. If Alexander Pierce and/or Remus Strauss cannot be reached or are not available, questions may be directed to C.G.B. Spender._


	2. Spooky and the Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mutant, a doctor, a UFO, and a curious case of interdepartmental inefficiency. Not necessarily in that order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Standard X Files warnings apply. These include discussions about alien abduction (of teenagers and Mulder's younger sister), casual discussion about dead bodies and murder victims, and descriptions of dead bodies and murder victims.

The woman walked through the Hoover building with a determined stride. Her power suit was neatly pressed; her red hair immaculate. Though she projected cool, collected confidence, an undercurrent of nerves flowed in the back of her head. Sharp blue eyes tracked everything as she searched for the office number the receptionist had given her. She hadn’t been told why she’d gotten called in from Quantico, only that she had to come as soon as possible. That wasn’t something anyone really wanted to hear. At least, not without a reason that didn’t involve the words “fired”, “jail”, or “administrative leave”.

She knocked on the door and a man’s voice called for her to come in. Three men were in the small office. One, sat behind the desk, was a gray haired, middle aged man who was sat behind a desk with a small mountain of files and paperwork on it. The second was wizened and wrinkled, but she had to suppress the shiver that wanted to go down her spine when he stared at her. The third, who looked a lot like the first, sat right next to the desk and stared at her as she walked in. 

“Agent Scully, thanks for coming on such short notice. Please,” the man behind the desk gestured towards the lone chair in front of the desk. As she sat, the second man moved to lean against the filing cabinets nearest to the desk, lit cigarette in hand. 

“We see you’ve been with us for just over two years,” said the first man.

“Yes sir,” she kept a professional tone.

“You went to medical school, but chose not to practice. How did you come to work for the FBI?”

She paused, careful, before she gave an answer. “Well, sir. I was recruited out of medical school. My parents saw it as an act of rebellion, but I saw the FBI as a place I could distinguish myself.”

“Are you familiar with an agent named Fox Mulder,” the third man asked as he shifted in his chair.

“Yes I am.”

“How so?”

“By reputation. He’s an Oxford educated psychologist who wrote a monograph on serial killers and the occult that helped catch Monty Props in 2003. Generally thought of as the best analyst in the violent crimes section. He had ah, nickname in the academy,” she glanced over at the smoking man, a nervous blush on her face “Spooky Mulder.”

The first flipped through some of the papers in the file, and she focused back on him. “What I’ll also tell you is that Agent Mulder has developed a consuming devotion to an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream. Are you familiar with the so called X Files?”

“I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena, unusual incidents, or mutant related crimes that we handled with or instead of S.H.I.E.L.D.” The room seemed like it was filling with smoke from the smoking man’s cigarette.

“More or less. The reason you’re here, Agent Scully, is that we want you to assist Agent Mulder with the X files. You will write field notes, as well as your scientific observations on the validity of the work. Barring, of course, any files to do with S.H.I.E.L.D. or...mutant interference” As he spoke, she breathed deep and squared her shoulders. That was not what she’d expected to hear when she’d come in that morning. Everyone had heard whispers about mutants and the-to put it politely-unusual nature of what little was known about the work S.H.I.E.L.D. did. It’d been a major stir when Charles Xavier had established his school in Westchester. There were still agents assigned to guard the place. She looked up at the smoking man and tried to read him before she looked back to the first man.

“Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X files, sir?” Most of them had nothing to do with mutants anyway. S.H.I.E.L.D. handled most mutant related issues and crimes. He looked at her with intense eyes as he answered.

“Agent Scully, I’m sure you’ll give a proper scientific analysis. You’ll want to contact Agent Mulder shortly. We’ll be looking forward to seeing your reports.”

She knew a dismissal when she heard one.

As she walked towards the elevator, she couldn’t help but remember the rumors she’d heard about Mulder. Mutterings about conspiracy theories and an affinity for stalking S.H.I.E.L.D. cases that were released or leaked; whispers about an unnatural talent for reading people. The words “Unregistered Freak” had been thrown around by some of the more unsavory types. That he worked in the basement of the building hadn’t helped matters at all. What most talked about was the alien thing.

When the elevator doors opened to the basement, the sight that greeted her was the height of barely controlled chaos. Pipes ran everywhere along the walls and ceiling. Shelves full of cardboard boxes stuffed to the brim with as many files as they could hold covered the pieces of wall left open by the pipes. Doors led into various offices and the hallway twisted around them like the building itself was trying to hide its secrets away from the world.

Scully made sure to read the plaques outside the doors on the way down. The basement’s chaos felt different from the tightly controlled type of chaos that reigned on the floors above. At the very end of the hall, before it opened into another dark passageway covered in pipes, was the door she wanted to find. It was time. She knocked and from the other side of the doo, a sarcastic voice called.

“Sorry, nobody here but the FBI’s most unwanted.”

As she walked in, she was greeted by the sight of a man bent over a bunch of photos on top of an old x-ray viewing box. She stepped in and there it all was. Filing cabinets, a desk covered in paperwork, files, books, and do-dads of some description or other. Shelves filled with books, more shelves and filing cabinets filled with hundreds upon hundreds of files. A cork board in the back behind the desk covered in paper and pictures next to a poster with a picture of a UFO on it emblazoned with the words ‘I Want to Believe’. The shelves went back through the entire space and made it feel either claustrophobic, or maybe cozy; she wasn’t sure which then.

As soon as she got close to his chair, he turned around and looked up at her. His hazel eyes felt like they dug into her soul the second he made eye contact. She was being tested. She put on her best professional smile and walked forward to offer and handshake.

“Agent Mulder, I’m Agent Scully. I’ve been assigned to work with you.” He took the hand she offered and shook, but the sensation from before turned completely claustrophobic as soon as they made contact.

“Oh, isn’t it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded?” His voice was sharp with sarcasm, and the claustrophobic sense deepened. “So who did you tick off to get stuck with this assignment, Scully?” He smacked a picture back down as he looked right back at her again. She straightened herself and settled into her “difficult people” mode. This too, would pass. 

“Actually, I’m looking forward to working with you,” she admitted with a tilt of her head. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Oh really? I was under the impression,” his eyes went hard, “that you were sent to spy on me.” His lips were pursed and he looked at her as if he dared her. Well, she had no problems making her position clear there. She looked him right in the eye and started in.

“If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials, I’m su-”

“You’re a medical doctor, you, teach at the academy, you did your undergraduate degree in physics,” with that he pulled off his glasses and pulled a file out from under a stack on the desk he’d been working on and opened it to look at “Einstein’s Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation. Dana Scully’s senior thesis. Now that’s a credential, rewriting Einstein.” He turned and threw it back on the desk. Her face was carefully crafted into quite an impressive unimpressed stare.

“Did you bother to read it?”

“I did, I liked it,” his voice sounded genuine as he placed a box full of slides on a projector. “It’s just that, in my line of work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply.” The claustrophobic sensation went away like a bubble popping as he passed her for the light switch. She glared flatly after him and resisted the urge to roll her eyes as he flipped off the lights and walked back over to the projector.

“Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this, though. A woman in Oregon, 21 years old. Autopsy shows no cause of death. Nothing.” A picture of a very dead brunette woman was projected on the wall. The next picture turned over and what looked like irritated mosquito bites or burns were displayed on her back. “There are these two distinct marks on her lower back. Doctor Scully, can you I.D. these marks?” His voice was back to that sarcastic, suspicious tone from before.

Scully was drawn in by the marks, though. She walked forward and gave the picture a careful exam.

“Needle punctures maybe. Bites,” she turned back to look at him. “Electrocution of some kind.” He turned the slide again to a picture of a chemical formula.

“This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue. Ever seen it?” He sounded far more genuine that time. She paused and looked over the makeup. It was totally unfamiliar.

“It’s organic. Is it some sort of synthetic protein?”

“Beats me! I’ve never seen it before either!” He looked delighted. “But here it is again in Sturgess, South Dakota; and again in Shamrock, Texas.” His face had gone dark again.

“Do you have a theory?” She asked.

“I have plenty of theories. Maybe you can explain why the Bureau just ignores these as unexplainable when S.H.I.E.L.D. leaves them to us.” He stood across from her at the wall. Another test. “Do you believe in aliens, Doctor Scully?”

“That they exist? In another galaxy, maybe. But on Earth? As a scientist, I have to say no. There’s no support for that within what we currently know.”

“Even with the experiments Erik Selvig and Jane Foster are running right now?”

“Those are purely theoretical. The fact is, that there’s not even a possibility for interstellar flight right now, much less intergalactic.”

“Did you know that this Oregon woman was the fourth out her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances? When science and convention don’t have answers, couldn’t we finally turn to the fantastic for a solution?”

“The girl obviously died of something. If it was natural, maybe something was missed in the postmortem. If she was murdered, it’s possible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is the idea that there are any answers beyond the realm of science. We may not know the reason yet, but it is absolutely possible to quantify it, or reason it out within the scientific realm. The answers are there, you just have to know where to look.”

“And that’s why they put the ‘I’ in FBI. I’ll see you tomorrow Scully. Bright and early, to leave for the very plausible state of Oregon.”

She smiled as she left. She’d passed, she was sure of it.

***

It was a very early morning. After a night of careful (read: frenzied) packing, Dana was not enthused about the security. She was even less enthused about the looks the TSA agents gave her after they saw the case files in her carry-on. The joys of a violent crime assignment. She checked her emails on her phone and swept the seats at the gate for Mulder, who’d gotten pulled aside for a random check. Said random check may or may not have had to do with how manic he’d looked. The case files in his carry-on probably hadn’t helped either. After another fifteen minutes of checking emails and replying to road trip pictures her sister had sent, Mulder finally reappeared. 

“Starktech?” He was chipper for someone who’d gotten accused of being a serial killer.

“Less expensive than Apple.”

“True, but you know what they say about Stark Industries’ Weapons R&D.”

“That they have more military contracts than any other weapons developer in the country?” Mulder shook his head and laughed.

“Word is, Mr. Stark himself doesn’t really control where those weapons of his wind up. Just how well they work.” He said.

“If he’s not controlling that, then who does?”

“Now that’s the real question.”

Dana resisted the urge to sigh and joined the queue to board. It was too early for conspiracy theories.

One slightly delayed takeoff later, and Dana had spread out the case file on the table in front of her. The case was interesting enough. Four people, all from the class of 2005, murdered in the last four years. All of them were born, raised, and had lived in the same small town. Only the autopsy on the most recent victim had notes about the mysterious marks. She pored over the notes taken in the file, the pictures, and the newspaper clippings that had been stuffed alongside them. 

Dana was startled by the announcement for the final descent. Her stomach jumped into her throat when suddenly, the plane dropped. Screams came from around the plane as it shook. Another dip and then the plane twisted to the side. The overhead compartments dumped their contents and Dana had to hold down the papers to keep them from flying to the other side of the plane. Her heart beat against her chest and she crammed her eyes closed and focused on her breathing. After a few more terrifying seconds, the plane was righted. People started to chat again and Mulder rolled over to look at her while he raised his seat back. His earbuds were still in his ears.

“This must be the place,” he said, mirth in the tiny smirk on his face. She gave him a half hearted glare and gathered the files together. It was time to work.

Once they hit Bellefleur, she confronted him about the elephant in the file.

“You didn’t mention this case has already been investigated. Twice,” she said.

“Yeah. S.H.I.E.L.D. had it first and said it was ‘not strange enough’ after sending a few of their people out here. So they passed it off to us. Our boys came out here, spent a week, enjoyed the local salmon which, with a little lemon twist is just to die for, if you’ll pardon the expression. And without explanation, they were called back in, the case was reclassified and buried in the X files. Until I dug it up last week.” He popped sunflower seeds as he spoke.

“And you found something they didn’t?”

He hummed, shelling another sunflower seed.

“The autopsy reports on the first three victims show no unidentified marks or tissue samples. But those reports were signed by a different medical examiner than the one for the latest victim,” she said.

An impressed smile came over his face and he glanced over at her, sunflower seed in teeth.

“That’s pretty good Scully.”

“Better than you expected, or better than you hoped?”

“Well, I’ll let you know when we get past the easy part. First we’ve got to do a little grave digging. I’ve arranged to have one of the bodies exhumed so we can see if their results match the girl’s.”

“Is the ME dirty?”

“We won’t know that until we redo the autopsy You’re not squeamish about that sort of thing, are you?”

Dana thought back to the cadaver lab and body farm.

“Not really. Never exhumed anyone before, though.”

Not even a second after last word was out of her mouth, the radio turned on and started cycling through frequencies all by itself. Mulder ducked and started to scan the sky as if he was looking for something. The static got louder and louder and Dana winced, hands clasped over her ears like vices.

“What’s going on?”

Mulder stayed silent and pulled over before he got out of the car and started to root around in the back. Dana looked on, eyebrows climbing, as he pulled out a can of red spray paint and marked an X in the road where the radio had started to go haywire.

“What’s that for?” She paced him back to the front of the car. He gave her a smile, a strange light in his eyes.

“Nothing important. C’mon, we’ll be late for the party.”

  


***

They arrived to the sight of a fight brewing between the gravedigger, the detective, and a man with a teenage girl next to him. Both Mulder and Scully jetted out of the car as soon as it was parked and ran up the hill. Mulder dug his badge out from his jacket pocket.

“I’m Agent Mulder and this is Agent Scully. What’s going on here?”

“You can’t dig this body up! That’s what’s going on here,” the man with the teenage girl shouted.

“Slow down; who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Dr. Nemman, and you can’t do this!”

“Dr. Nemman, the coroner?” Scully asked as she dug for the exhumation order.

“That’s right. I already did the autopsy. There’s nothing to find! You need a court order to do this anyway!”

Scully gave him the paper to examine and walked to the edge of the grave, Mulder close behind. A tearing noise startled them both and they looked at the ties just to see the last one give way. They dove out of the way of the casket as it tumbled down the hill at breakneck speed. Men raced after it as it hit a gravestone halfway down the hill and exploded open with an earsplitting crack. Dana was up and after it in an instant with Mulder just behind. When they got to it, they stood still. Both of their faces were slack with shock. The men around them were as silent as the graves they were surrounded by.

The body inside wasn’t human looking. Not even a little bit. It was short and small, surrounded by its own decay. The head was what was really extraordinary. It was flat and rectangular with deep eye sockets and a box like protrusion that looked like a muzzle or a mouth. A huge cavity yawned above the muzzle in a strange echo of a human nasal cavity. Dana leaned forward and swept over the body. She cycled through every defect, mutation, and illness she knew off the top of her head. None of them fit with what she was seeing. She heard Mulder call for them to get the body to the morgue in the background, but she couldn’t look away.

Once they finally got to the morgue (which was almost another near-disaster involving a bad body bag and a thrown out back) Mulder ran around the corpse and snapped photos, practically radiating chaos as Dana documented everything on the recorder.

“Do you know what this means Scully? How amazing this is? It’s almost too big to comprehend!” He snapped another picture.

“Subject is 156 centimeters in length, weighing 52 pounds in extremis. Corpse is in advanced stages of decay and desiccation. Distinguishing features include large ocular cavities, oblate cranium. These indicate the subject is not human.” Mulder’s camera flashed in her eyes. Again.

“Could you please point that flash away from me?”

“If it’s not human, what is it?”

Dana had to admit, privately, that she was at a bit of a loss. Not that she would’ve ever said that.

“It’s mammalian. Best guess, probably a chimpanzee, or a similar animal. Possibly an orangutan.”

“Buried in Ray Soames’ grave? Come on, why would someone do that? I want tissue samples and x-rays, blood typing, toxicology, and a full genetic work up. What we can’t get done here, we’ll order to go.”

“Are you serious? Do you honestly think that this is some kind of extraterrestrial? If that were true, why would S.H.I.E.L.D. leave a first contact case to us? Wouldn’t that fall right into their purview? This is somebody’s sick joke.“ Her stomach twisted at the memory of some of the rumors about what went on at S.H.I.E.L.D. behind closed doors.

“We can do those x-rays here. Is there any reason we can’t do them right now?” For the first time he looked completely genuine. His eyes were wide and he kept eye contact until she looked down at the body again. When she looked back up, she felt her resistance dissolve. 

“I’m not crazy, Scully.” He almost sounded sad. “I have the same doubts you do. “

She looked at him a minute longer before she caved. It may provide insight, and Dana was ever a doctor. The nagging thought that the x-ray would be a waste of time melted as soon as the pictures showed on the system. A metal object was shoved far into the nasal cavity. She almost had to pry Mulder out of the way to extract and clean it. She ordered the rest of the tests he’d asked for and grabbed the jar with the metal thing in it.

When they got back to the motel, she pulled up the Gifted and Mutant Index and scrolled through it with the results of the preliminary tests next to her. She still had a dim sort of hope that she’d find a record of a similarly mutated being of some sort on it. None of the domestics on the list fit, though, and to her frustration, the FBI didn’t have access to the whole thing. Anything international required a verified NSA, CIA, Interpol, or S.H.I.E.L.D. badge number to access. There were some mutations that had strange effects on the body, but nothing like that.

The metal tag was even more of a mystery. It didn’t look like any metal she’d ever seen before; and it was covered in tiny little valleys and ridges. Some of them were so small, they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. She stared at it through the glass of the jar. It was oblong, with a tiny indent into a ball shape on both ends. She turned it around and tried to see if any of the pattern would make sense, but nothing came to mind.

A knock at the door startled her out of her reverie.

“Who is it?”

“Jon Favreau.”

She smiled and went to open the door. Outside, Mulder stood. He still radiated energy and almost seemed like he was vibrating with it. He gave her a smile.

“I’m way too wired. I’m going for a run, wanna come?”

“Pass.” All she wanted was to finish her write up and go to bed.

“Did you figure out what the little thing up Ray Soames’ nose is yet?” He bounced from foot to foot.

“No,” she yawned. “And I’m not losing any sleep over it. Good night.” She closed the door and wandered back over to her laptop. She called up the x-ray that showed the tag and studied it. She still couldn’t figure out why S.H.I.E.L.D. had left this kind of case without checking the bodies. Or if they had, why they would’ve let the FBI bury it when that was their jurisdiction. Either way, a talk with Soames’ doctor was in order.

  
  


***  


The next morning, as they left for the hospital to talk to the doctor, Mulder stopped in his tracks. He tilted his head and started to search the parking lot. Dana opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, but got caught up by the same claustrophobic sensation as the day they’d met as soon as his eyes hit her. It was only for a second, but he kept looking. She looked around, but didn’t see anything.

“What’s wrong?” She asked as he turned full circle.

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Probably nothing,” he said, his voice distant. He snapped out of it, and the moment seemed to pop like a bubble. The same as the first time. “Let’s get going, huh?”

  


***  


The hospital was a brickwork and white windowed affair. It was decent sized with a large yard for recreation. Doctor Werber met them out front and led them through the yard as they started to talk.

“So, you were Ray Soames’ doctor, right?” Mulder began.

“Ray Soames was a patient of mine, yes. I treated him for just over a year for clinical schizophrenia. He had an inability to grasp reality. He seemed to suffer from some kind of post traumatic stress.”

“Is that something you’ve seen before?”

“I’ve treated similar cases.”

“Were any of them Ray Soames’ classmates?” Scully asked.

Werber’s jaw tightened. “Yes.”

“We’re trying to connect these deaths. Did you treat any of them with hypnosis?” Mulder asked.

Werber scoffed. “No, I did not.”

“Are you treating any of them now?” Scully asked.

“Currently? Yes. I’m treating Billy Miles and Peggy O’Dell. Both have been long term, live-in patients.”

“They’re here at this hospital?”

“Yes, going on four years now.”

“Would it be possible for us to talk to them.”

Werber stopped across from them, stress lines on his face. “Well, that might be a little difficult.”

He led them inside. Through a maze of hallways and doors to various wards he led them to a bed. A young man lay in it, eyes cracked open.

“Billy’s experiencing what we call a waking coma. Functionally, his brain waves are flat, and he’s persistently vegetative.”

“How did it happen?” Scully asked as they crossed the room to the bed. A girl in a wheelchair next to the bed stared up at them as they drew close.

“Both he and Peggy were in a car accident on State Road. Peggy?”

The girl looked up from the book she’d been reading from. 

“We have some visitors. Do you want to talk with them for a moment?”

“Billy wants me to read now.” Her voice was insistent.

She went back to her book and started to read aloud again in a mumbling voice. Mulder crossed over and bent down in front of her.

“Does he like it when you read to him?” His voice was soft and he made sure to look her in the eye.

She gave a small nod and seemed to relax, just a little bit. “Yes,” she said. “He needs me close.”

He stood up and walked away. “Doctor, would it be possible to do a cursory medical exam on Peggy?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, she slammed her fists on the chair and pushed over a table that was nearby. She wheeled herself forward and Dana rushed in to try and help the nurse, but stopped dead. Her nose had just started bleeding. There wasn’t any reason for it that Dana could see. And the reaction to just the mention of the possibility of an exam had unsettled her. She hadn’t seen someone react so violently to just a hint of something like that since her internship. Peggy screamed and fell through Dr. Werber and the nurse’s hands to the floor, screaming on the floor. Mulder rushed over and there, on her lower back, was the damning evidence.There were two irritated red dots on her lower back, plain as could be.

Dana sped out of the hospital as soon as Peggy was back in her chair. She couldn’t believe what she’d just seen. Mulder hadn’t even been surprised and with the strangeness of the autopsy, how weird the case was, and the ever-present shadow of the FBI and S.H.I.E.L.D., it was all too much. She heard Mulder’s footsteps chase after her and she kept on until she was at the doors to the hospital. As soon as she hit fresh air, she couldn’t hold her words back anymore.

“What’s going on here? How did you know she would have those marks on her back?”

“I don’t know, lucky guess?” Mulder was infuriatingly calm in the face of the most recent development. That was it.

“Cut the crap, Mulder. What is going on here? What do you know about those marks? What are they?”

“Why, so you can put it all in your little report?” he spat back. “I don’t think you’re ready for what I think.”

She glared up at him. “I’m here to solve this case, Mulder, and I want the truth!”

“The truth? I think those kids have been abducted.”

“By who?” She said, holding back the anger that had started building like embers.

“By what.”

She scoffed and shook her head. This was the most far- fetched conversation she’d had in a while. “You don’t really believe that.”

“Do you have a better explanation?” His face was etched with lines that hadn’t been there before.

“I’ll buy that girl is suffering from some kind of psychosis. Whether it’s from chemical agents, trauma, or those marks, I can’t say. But there’s nothing to support them flying around in flying saucer, Mulder! It’s crazy!” The embers burst into flames that could no longer be held back.

“Nothing to support that. Nothing scientific, you mean.” He looked tired. He looked like he’d aged years while she hadn’t been looking.

“There has got to be an explanation.” She couldn’t find the reason, and she felt the straws giving any hint at a rational explanation she’d managed to grasp slipping through her fingertips in this descent into madness. “You’ve got four victims. All of them died in or near the woods. They found Karen Swenson’s body in the forest, in her pajamas, ten miles from her house! How did she get there? What were they doing out there to begin with?” The flames and embers died as she reached the end of her questions. His face was a wall, bone deep exhaustion hidden away again. He almost looked contrite. If she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, she might’ve been fooled.

  


“I don’t know. That’s what we’ve got to find out. If we really want to know, we have to go to the woods and see what’s out there.” 

She looked down and sighed. He was right.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

  


***

The woods were snarled and dark. They had to move slow, flashlights eaten by the darkness. They separated at a small clearing and moved into the ring of trees. Dana watched the floor as the walked and then stopped. In the middle of a patch of normal forest floor was a patch of brown, ash-like dirt or powder. She put her flashlight down, took out a sample bag, and slipped some of it in.

Some mechanical noise startled her and she picked her flashlight up again. She moved as fast as she could towards the noise, gun drawn.

“Mulder,” she called.

She pressed on, eyes not able to see anywhere near enough in the gloom of the night. But once she reached the base of a small hill, that quickly changed. A painfully bright light flooded the top of the hill. Evergreen saplings cast strange shadows as they danced in the halo. A man’s shape was cast in shadow in front of the light and Scully swallowed her beating heart back into her chest.

“Mulder,” she tried again. “Mulder, is that you?”

The man suddenly pulled up a gun and advanced on her. Her gun was up in a heartbeat.

“Special Agent Dana Scully, FBI, drop your weapon,” her voice was as assertive and even as she could get it.

“I’m with the county sheriff’s department. You’re trespassing on private property here.”

“We are conducting an investigation here,” as she spoke, she heard Mulder jog up from behind her.

“You two need to get in your car and leave now, or I’ll have to arrest you. I don’t care who you are,” the sheriff’s voice went harder than it had been before and he shifted. 

“Hold on, this is a crime scene,” Mulder’s voice had the exact same tone. 

“Did you hear what I said? You’re on private property without legal permission. Now get in your car, and leave!”

They both hesitated a moment, claustrophobic sensation creeping back up Dana’s spine. Then, they lowered their weapons and did as he said. If feet were dragged, well, no one had to know.

  
  


***

  


“Do you think he might’ve been there because of this stuff,” Dana asked after a few minutes of driving. She pulled out the baggie with the ashy substance in it.

“Was that a campfire,” Mulder asked.

“It was all over the ground. Something’s going on here. Some kind of sacrifice, maybe.”

Mulder pulled out a compass and she paused. The needle wouldn’t stop turning. He got jittery and seemed to be checking a hundred things at once. Dana went from curious to concerned in a snap.

“Are you okay, Mulder?”

He checked the sky again before he started. “Yeah, I’m just. Um…”

“What’re you looking for.”

Blinding white.

Flashes like too close lightening.

Noise rushed loud, too loud in her ears.

Then, it was over. The car coughed, sputtered, and died and they just sat there for a spilt second, rain still dumping over the car. Mulder turned the key. Nothing. 

“What happened?”

“We lost power. Dead!” He checked his watch. “We lost nine minutes!” He almost glowed. He got out of the car, not bothered by the rain in the slightest and she chased after him.

“We lost what?!”

“Nine minutes! It was 9:03 just before the flash, and it just turned 9:13 right now!” He almost ran forward and crowed. “Look! Look! Oh, yes!”

There, on the road, was the red x he’d made on the road the day before. Innocent as could be.

“Abductees, people who’ve reported UFO sightings, they report unexplained time loss!”

She turned right back around for the car. “Come on,” she said as she went.

“Gone! Just like that!” He looked far too happy about it. Her head span a little.

“Time can’t just disappear! Not without some kind of gravitational anomaly or something like that!”

The car started out of the blue and Mulder’s eyes were alight as he bounded back to it. “Not in this zip code.”

As soon as he was back in the car, he pulled out a burner phone and started to type away at it. The whole drive back he kept glancing at it as if he expected it to go off at any second. Dana, for her part, was also on her phone. To be fair, she was on her phone to see if she could get a preview of the reports from the lab. That would’ve been a lot easier if Bellefleur had anything that amounted to good cell reception. 

Unfortunately, the monsoon-like rain hadn’t let up in the slightest, so they both got re-soaked as they ran to their rooms. As soon as she’d changed, Dana went straight back to her laptop to check the results. She hadn’t expected much, but the lab had rushed it and gotten the toxicology done at least. There wasn’t anything interesting outside of the synthetic protein, but that was even weirder than the whole case had been anyway. Karen Swenson’s toxicology report hadn’t shown anything either. Dana had privately wanted to get another screen done just in case something had been botched. But as she looked through the list of reports, negative after negative stared at her. Still, she wouldn’t know anywhere near the amount she wanted to until the blood typing, genome sequencing, and mutation testing had been run.

As she was about to continue her search for a logical reason for Ray Soames’ appearance, the power cut out. She sighed and looked at the battery percentage, which prompted an even heavier sigh. She wasn’t going to get much else done that night. So she grabbed her towel and pajamas and trudged to the bathroom. Everything seemed fine as she started the water and got ready to soak in the warmth, but then, a chill ran down her spine. Her fingers brushed over two small dots on the small of her back. She turned and craned her neck to try and see them, but the dim light of her phone didn’t show anything. 

Stomach in her throat, she threw on her robe over her underwear and raced over to Mulder’s room, not even concerned about the rain. She pounded on the door, heartbeat in her ears. He answered and his eyes softened.

“What’s up?” His entire demeanor was a lot softer than it’d been since she’d met him.

“I need you to look at something.”

As soon as he stepped aside for her, she went in and took off her robe. He ran his phone’s light down her back and she felt his fingers brush over the spots.

“They’re just mosquito bites,” he said.

“Really?” She tasted metal in her mouth as the crash from adrenaline set in.

“Yeah, I got bitten up out there too.” His voice was amused and the light was back in his eyes.

She turned around and hugged him before he could back away. To her surprise, he let her without a word about it.

  
  
***

  


“My parents both have the gene. It’s not active in her, but my dad’s is. They thought my sister might’ve had it active. Just because of how mutation tracks. I was twelve when it happened, she was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night. Just gone. Vanished. No note, no phone calls, no camera footage, no evidence of any kind.” He talked slowly, as if the words cost him everything to say. Maybe they did.

“And you never found her?” Dana dimly noted that voice was gentler than it had been in any conversation they’d ever had. He winced for a split second before the wall was back in front of his eyes.

“It tore the family apart. No one would talk about it. There was nothing concrete to confront, nothing to offer any hope.” His face was toward her, but he kept his eyes cast downwards, like what he said was too much if he could see her.

“What did you do?”

“Eventually, I went off to school in England. There were fewer questions about potential mutation. After I was done, I got recruited by the bureau. By then, it’d been long enough that they didn’t bother to check for a mutation as long as there weren’t any obvious signs. It seems I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioral models to criminal cases.” His voice went a bit strange at the last sentence, his eyes cast even further downward to the dim murk that ruled the floor he sat on. 

“After some relatively high profile success, I had enough freedom to pursue my interests, and that’s when I found the X files. I was going to leave for S.H.I.E.L.D. before I found them. I don’t think it was an accident. Not when I look at the timing of it. S.H.I.E.L.D. is in the dark a lot, but they’re where most of those cases go. At first, they looked like the garbage dump of whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t deem important enough to waste resources on and the FBI considered too fantastical to even think about investigating. But I was fascinated! I read all the cases I could get my hands on and dug into every public S.H.I.E.L.D. file I could find. Hundreds of them! I read everything I could about the paranormal, aliens, para-science, mutants, inhumans, the gifted, the super-soldier serum; I read it all,” he opened his mouth to continue, but stopped cold. Dana leaned forward.

“What?”

“There are classified files from S.H.I.E.L.D. and the government that I’ve been trying to access, but someone’s been blocking me from getting to it. Even contacts I have that can usually get me restricted files can’t get to the ones I’ve been trying to get at.”

“Who? I don’t understand,” she sat up.

“People at a higher level of power in both places. The only reason I’ve been allowed to continue is because I’ve made connections in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Congress. “

“What’re they afraid of? That you’ll leak the information?”

“You’re part of the agenda. You know that.” His eyes bored into hers through the gloom of the power outage. The claustrophobic sensation was back in spades.

“I’m not part of any agenda. You’ve got to trust me. I’m here to solve this. Just like you,” her voice was firm, and she drew up her knees. The sheets pooled in her lap as she moved. His eyes drilled deeper and he moved closer. The less space between them, the more the claustrophobic, crawling sensation pressed against her senses.

“I’m telling you this, because you need to know, because of what you’ve _seen_. In my research, I went to Charles Xavier, who brought me back through memories I’d repressed. I remembered a bright light outside and a presence in the room that I couldn’t-. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t help even when she called for me. Listen to me, Scully! This thing exists!”

“But how do you kn-”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. and the government know it exists! The SSR before them knew it existed! That’s why they call the things they find 084s; because nobody would think to question a boring number like they would ‘object of unknown origin’. I have to know what they’re protecting! Nothing else matters to me, and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to it with no one to hold the red tape in front of me.” He stared into her eyes and she realized she couldn’t draw back. The walls seemed closer than they ever had and she felt like something was crawling up her spine.

The bubble popped when his phone rang and startled them both. He paused for a moment and shivered before he answered. 

“Hello? What?! Who is this?” He put down his phone, faced shocked. “That was some woman. She just said Peggy O’Dell was dead.”

  


***

  


Lights flashed on the emergency vehicles and cops and sheriffs alike swarmed the area. Mulder and Scully walked over to the giant eighteen wheeler where the driver stood, face pale and shell shocked.

“She just ran out in front of me!” He looked like he was a breath away from throwing up or passing out. Dana edged closer, just in case.

“She was running?! On foot?!” Mulder pressed.

Paramedics came over and led the man away as they pulled a shock blanket around him. Dana went over to the body while Mulder went with the guy to ask him some more specific questions. She had been covered with a sheet and Dana paused for a second to prepare before she lifted it off to examine her. At first, nothing stuck out amongst the sea of medical equipment and trauma. Then, she saw it. Peggy’s watch had stopped. The hands were at the same time as the time she and Mulder had lost as they’d been on the road back to the motel.

She jogged back over to tell Mulder, but before she could he started beelining for the car.

“What’s going on?”

“Someone trashed the lab and stole the body. We’re going back to the motel.”

The drive back was tense. It got worse once they got back and Dana’s phone went off, the chime an inappropriate level of bright, given the circumstances. Trouble came again when she checked. She read it again to make sure she’d read it right. Then she read it again, and again. Finally, she admitted that her eyes hadn’t played tricks on her.

“Both labs lost all of the test samples, results, and photos. There’s nothing left, even on their backup systems.”

They were both stock-still after she finished for a second. Then, in unison, they scrambled for her laptop. They crowded through the door at the same time and Mulder jittered the entire wait for her laptop to boot and her to sign in. There was nothing left. All of the pictures and results, all of her reports, every single scrap of evidence, down to the tiniest detail had been stripped off her laptop. 

“Shit! I knew we shouldn’t have left those alone! I knew it!” Mulder yelled, pacing around the room. 

Dana dug through her backup drive, but everything from the case was gone from there too. She sat back. Behind the anger at losing all of the things they’d found, she felt violated. She still felt as though someone uninvited was in her room. Even if they were long since gone.

A knock came on the door. Dana went over and looked outside the peephole. There was the girl who’d been with Dr. Nemman the day they’d arrived. She opened the door and the girl pleaded to her.

“My name is Theresa Nemman. You’ve got to help me!”

Mulder came over and pulled Dana aside.

“Come on in,” he said. 

He opened the door a little wider and Theresa sped in in a blur. Her spine crumpled as soon as she sat down in the chair across from Dana’s open laptop. Dana closed it and sat in one smooth motion. Mulder, last over after he closed the door, was relegated to the bed. 

“This is how it happens,” Theresa said, eyes wet. “I don’t know how I get there. I just find myself out in the woods!” Her voice shook.

“How long has it been happening?’ Mulder was back under the veneer of professionalism.

“Ever since we graduated. It happened to my friends too. That’s why you need to protect me! I’m scared- I’m scared I might…I might die. Like Peggy did tonight.” Tears welled as she spoke. Her eyes darted back and forth between them. They barely stayed on either of them for more than a few seconds at a time. As soon as she finished she looked down at her hands as they twisted in her lap.

“Your father’s the medical examiner. You were the one on the phone. You told me she’d been killed.” She nodded, eyes still on her hands. Dana watched her for a few seconds.

“Theresa, your father knows about this doesn’t he? About what happens.” She asked as gently as she could.

“Yes. He said never to tell anyone about it. Any of it.”

“Why?” Mulder asked.

“He thinks that’ll protect me. He thinks _he_ can protect me. But I don’t think he _can_.”

“Do you have the marks, Theresa?” At that question, she deflated and her eyes went back to her hands.

“Yes. I’m going to die. I’m going to be next, aren’t I?”

Dana made eye contact and tried to make sure the determination could be seen on her face “No. You’re not going to die.”

Theresa’s nose started to gush blood and she gasped. She tried to stem it, but there was already blood on her clothes and more covered her fingers. Dana grabbed tissues from the nightstand and put Theresa’s head into the proper position to try and stop the nosebleed.

Another knock came from the door and as soon as Mulder opened it a tiny crack, two men pushed it all the way open and forced their way past him. Dr. Nemman was in the lead and reached towards her as he came.

“Let’s go home, Theresa,” he said. He near pushed Dana aside and sat next to Theresa, another tissue in hand. “Come on honey. Come on; let’s go home.”

“I don’t think she wants to,” said Mulder.”

“I don’t care what you think!” Nemman snapped back, eyes on his daughter. “She’s a sick girl.”

The detective chose that moment to speak. “Your father wants to take you home. He’ll get you all cleaned up.”

“I’ll take you back to where you’re _safe_ , Theresa. Detective Miles and I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

“You’re Billy Miles’ father?”

“That’s right, and you stay away from my boy.”

The two stormed out with Theresa in tow and drove away like the devil.

“You gotta love this place! It’s like a grounded helicarrier,” Mulder said.

“They know who’s responsible for the murders, Mulder,” Dana said eyebrows and lips pinched.

“They know something.” 

“Dr. Nemman’s been hiding medical evidence! He lied on the autopsy reports, and now we find out about the detective. Who else would have a reason to trash the lab and wipe the reports?” 

“Why would they do that? What would they want with the corpse?”

“I don’t know.”

“Makes you wonder what’s in those other two graves,” he said, an increasingly familiar razor sharp glint in his eyes.

A few texts later he looked up. “Caretaker says both graves are empty. I think I know who did it. I think I know who killed Karen Swenson and the others.”

“Detective Miles?”

“Detective Miles’ son.”

“Billy Miles. The one in the vegetative state. A boy in a hospital who’s been in a coma and hasn’t even twitched a muscle in the past four years?”

“Peggy O’Dell was bound to a wheelchair! It’s a little late for her mutation to suddenly emerge and I don’t think she would’ve been the first choice for a super-soldier serum experiment. But she ran in front of that truck anyway. Look, I’m not making this up. It all fits the profile of alien abduction!”

“This fits a _profile_?!” Scully was incredulous. Again.

“ _Yes_! Peggy O’Dell was killed around 9:00, right around the same time we lost nine minutes on the highway. Something happened in those nine minutes. I think time, as we know it, stopped, and something or someone took control over it.”

For once as he bored into her eyes with his, that claustrophobic sensation wasn’t there. His face dropped into a resigned expression.

“You think I’m crazy,” he said. The same lines appeared around his eyes.

He turned his back to her and started to pace towards the door. He turned back just before he reached it, but Dana almost didn’t notice. She’d had an epiphany. Her brain fired away like a gatling gun and her body swam with excitement.

“Peggy O’Dell’s watch stopped just after nine. I made a note of it in the report.”

He was right in front of her again.

“That’s the reason they come to the forest, because something in it controls them and summons them there. The marks must be from some kind of test that’s being done on them. Maybe it triggers a different kind of mutant gene, and that explains Ray Soames’ body!”

“And the force summoned Theresa Nemman to the forest tonight,” Dana continued.

“Yes! But Billy Miles took her there, summoned by some kind of alien presence there.”

Dana started to laugh. It was so insane, so beyond anything she’d even thought to consider that she felt drunk with it. Mulder laughed with her, his face all lit up again.

“Come on,” he said as soon as they’d both calmed down.” Let’s get out of here.”

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re going to pay Billy Miles a visit.”

***

In the car Dana thought through the insanity of the last three days. Her mind clicked over it all and she hit on the same thing. She looked over at Mulder who was jittery with excitement and energy. It was like a space heater that poured any unmasked emotion off of him. All the evidence pointed one way. After all that’d been said, she almost didn’t want to ask. Still, as she thought about the crawling, claustrophobic sensation, she had to. It wasn’t something she wanted to ask about, especially with how awful people could be to enhanced people and mutants.

“Mulder?” She pushed it out before she could second guess her way out of it.

He hummed and glanced over at her. As soon as he saw her, a coat of nerves settled on his face.

“You said they thought your sister might have an active enhanced mutation gene.”

His face pinched, but he gave a single nod. Not a single sound left his mouth.

“Do you have one too? Did they pass it on to you?”

His shoulders hunched. He looked over at her and there was real fear in his eyes. He looked back at the road. He didn’t say anything for so long she thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. Just as thought about whether to ignore it or ask again, he started to speak.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he said. He looked her dead in the eye. The marrow deep fear ran over him and he was so tense, Dana had the stray thought that if she touched him, he might shatter.

“I’m only telling you because you deserve to know. After what I’ve already told you I- you need to know. I can’t really turn it off. I can focus it on specific people or use it to look for people. But I haven’t been able to turn it off since I turned eleven.”

“What is it Mulder?” Her voice was a whisper, afraid to shatter the moment.

“I can read people. I can’t hear thoughts or see what people are thinking, but I can feel their emotions, their intentions, their desires. If I focus on it the way I’m supposed to, I can predict what they’ll do. If I really focus on it; if I use it _right_ I can tell people what they’ll do before they even know it. I know if they’re going to be an ally, or if they’ll stab me in the back. And-,” he stopped dead and looked at her, remorse in every nook and cranny of his face that she could see.

“I read you. Every time we’ve argued and the first time we met. I was reading you. I’m sorry. I can’t- I know that’s not enough, but I really am sorry. I swear, I’ll never read you again without asking. I try not to actively read anyone I’m friends with unless they ask me to.”

It all clicked. The claustrophobia, the snakes on her back, the soul deep bore hole he drilled when they’d argued. Dana’s temper flared and she opened her mouth to tear him a new one, but then she stopped. More clicked away. She thought about everything he’d said, everything he was surrounded by all the time. The flames banked to embers and she took a few minutes more of the tense silence between them. The air was so thick it could’ve stopped a bullet. He didn’t say anything as she ran over it all in her head. She snuck a glance and he looked ready for her to boot him out of the car. She sighed.

“That’s not okay. I understand why you did it, but you need to know that I’m not okay with that. I won’t out you, and I won’t leave; even though I’m mad enough to kick you out of this car while it’s moving. But just know, if you ever do that to me without asking, on purpose, again; I’m going to punch you. And I will leave.”

He nodded and kept his eyes on the road. The thickness of the air slowly dissipated and she started to relax. She wouldn’t be not-mad for a little while. But if she could deal with everything else that’d been thrown at her, she could deal with this too. As long as he kept to his own head, she wouldn’t have to find a way to hide a body.

“How does it work?” She asked. Her question surprised her when it slipped out.

He glanced at her, an eyebrow raised. “What do you mean?”

“Do you feel everyone’s emotions? How do you know what their intentions are? What does it feel like?”

He stared at the road for a little before he answered. “With emotions, it’s sort of like I feel them through a latex glove or something. Like one of those heavy duty ones you use for medical stuff, you know? My own are right there inside the glove with me, though. Sometimes unfortunately. With the other two, I don’t know how I know. When I read a person; it’s just there. I know it like I know my own name or that the sky is blue. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than I just know.”

“Why didn’t you register?”

“It was just after that huge mutant massacre, you know? When I emerged, my parents were so scared that they just kept me hidden. There weren’t any laws that said you had to be tested, and my mutation didn’t change how I looked. Then I got older, and it was just my secret. I didn’t not want to tell anyone. Not at first, anyway. But you know how the FBI is about _enhanced_ people,” he spat out the name like a slur. “After a few weeks, I wasn’t going to tell anyone about that. What people in there say never lines up with what they want with you. Anyway, I saw how it was for the people who were registered. I had enough to deal with. I didn’t need some jackass digging into my file and blasting what I could do to the whole Bureau. Besides, it’s not really noticeable unless I pay attention to it.”

***

  


“We could stand here ’till the second coming waiting for Billy to get out of bed. It ain’t gonna happen. He _blinks_ , and I know about it,” the nurse said as she readied an IV bag for Billy.

“Did you notice anything unusual when you changed his bedpan last night?” Mulder asked. She blinked at him before she continued.

“Do you remember where you were at around nine last night?” Mulder kept on. 

“Mmm. Probably watching TV,” 

Dana went to the end of the bed on a hunch.

“Do you remember what you were watching?” 

“You know, I don’t really remember what I watched.” 

Dana pulled up the covers. Billy’s feet were filthy with the same ash she carried in the baggy in her pocket.

“What is she looking for?”

“Mulder, take a look at this,” Dana ignored the nurse.

He peered at Billy’s feet.

“Do you remember who was taking care of Peggy O’Dell last night?” He asked.

“Not me. It’s not my unit, not my aisle,” she said with a little laugh.

“I do have a job to do. What’s she doing now.” The nurse peered at Dana as she scraped some of the ash into another baggy she’d prepared. 

“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Mulder said.

“Okay.”

“Have a good day.”

They both left the ward, elbow to elbow.

“I don’t believe this! That kid might’ve killed Peggy O’Dell! This is crazy!”

“Scully!”

“He was in the woods.”

“Are you sure? It’s the same stuff?”

“This is the _same_ stuff!”

“Maybe we should take it and run a test-”

“We lost the original sample in the fire. What else could it be,” she exclaimed.

“All right, but I want you to understand what you’re saying.”

“You said it yourself!”

“Yeah, but _you_ have to write it in your report.”

That brought her to a screeching halt.

“You’re right. We’ll take another sample and run a test for comparison before we do anything.”

***

  


“The detective’s here,” Dana said as they pulled up.

They both went to inspect his truck, but a scream echoed through the darkened woods.

They ran towards it. Wet branches smacked her in the face and she fell behind, Mulder’s back disappearing ahead. She looked around a tiny opening, paused for just a second. Pain cracked through her skull and she crumpled to the forest floor. She managed to crack her eyes open, and Detective Miles towered above her, rifle in hand.

“We tried to warn you. You wouldn’t listen. I told you to stay out of this.”

He darted away.

Dana fought through the dizziness and forced herself to all fours. More screams came from deeper in the forest. She bit her lips and forced herself onto her feet. As soon as she was up, pain radiated from the goose-egg that formed on her forehead. She clutched it as she stumbled towards where she thought the screams had came from.

A gunshot splintered through the forest and she shifted towards it. She tried to run, but her legs wouldn’t move right. She was below a little rise again when an unearthly light shone through the trees. Wind pushed against her hard enough to make her eyes water. She stared, enraptured, until the light disappeared as suddenly as it’d appeared.

She started to head towards where she thought she remembered the gunshot came from, when she heard it.

“Scully!” Mulder trampled through the woods at top speed towards her. She ran for him and met him in the middle.

“Mulder, what happened? There was a light!”

“It was incredible.” He looked like he’d had a religious experience. As far as he went, she guessed he had.

***

  


Mulder wound up telling her how Billy had carried Theresa to the light. How the detective had shot at him. How the light had flared and then Theresa and Billy had woken up as if nothing had ever been wrong in the first place. Afterwards, he never told her how he’d managed to get an appointment with Dr. Xavier. He also never told her how he’d managed to get a thumb drive of the session that he hid with all the other evidence he’d squirreled away from prying eyes.

She saw what Dr. Xavier had allowed them to have when she went in for the review of her field report. The man at the desk was…not happy, to say the least.

“What we just watched. What you wrote in your field reports. The scientific basis just seems wholly unsupportable. You’re aware of that, right?”

She steeled herself. They’d pry her integrity from her cold, dead hands.

“My reports are personal and subjective. I don’t think I’ve gone so far as to draw conclusions from what I’ve seen.”

“Or haven’t seen, if your report reads correctly,” the other man said facetiously. “Did you, or did you not, experience this time loss?”

“I can’t give substantial evidence that I did, no.”

“What _can_ you substantiate, Agent Scully? I see nothing that justifies the legitimacy of these investigations,” the man at the desk said.

“There were crimes committed.”

“Yes, but how do you prosecute a case like this? With testimony given under the influence of a telepathic mutant from a boy who claims aliens gave him orders through an implant. In his _nose_ . You have _no_ physical evidence.”

She pulled the implant from Ray Soames’ corpse and the baggie of scrapings from Billy Miles’ feet from her case and handed them to the man at the desk.

“This is the object Billy Miles described as a communication device. I removed it from the body we exhumed and kept it in my pocket. It was the only piece of evidence that wasn’t stolen or irretrievably erased. I ran a lab test on it. The material couldn’t be identified.”

The silence was deafening.

“Agent Mulder. What does he believe,” the man at the desk asked. She sighed a little before she answered.

“Agent Mulder believes that we are not alone.”

“Thank you. That’ll be all, Agent Scully.”

She still knew a dismissal when she heard one.

That would’ve been all, but as she left the cigarette man brushed past her. Against her better judgement, she turned and watched him go into the division chief’s office that she’d just left.

  


***

  


The numbers on her phone just kept turning, but Dana couldn’t sleep. The things she’d seen played out in 4K behind her eyes. The things Mulder had told her echoed in her ears whenever the pictures went away. Her ringtone was almost a blessing, and she answered before it was even a quarter through its first loop.

“Hello?”

“Scully, it’s me. I can’t sleep. I called the DA’s office in Raymond County, but they didn’t have a case file on Billy Miles. The paperwork is gone. We need to talk, Scully.”

She paused, memories of an unmarked van and military men dressed in S.H.I.E.L.D. tac gear outside the Hoover building floated behind her eyes again.

“Yes. Tomorrow.” She hung up after a few beats of silence and kept her vigil with her clock, the numbers glaring through the dark into the backs of her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm so glad to get this chapter posted. It did follow very close to the episode and I would like to specify that I don't own these characters, or the relevant scenes and dialogue that are from the episode. The next one will be an original case, so there's that in store. Hopefully I will have that chapter finished this week so that the editing process can begin.
> 
> Thank you again to my editor for turning this pile of junk into the less junky finished product we have here!
> 
> Thank you all so much for the warm welcome! I'm very excited to keep working on this and to bring these two together.


	3. Mulder, Scully, In the Woods, With the 084

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contact is made with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Mulder has a hell of a time.

An excited call from one John Fitzgerald Byers could’ve meant a few things for Fox. It could’ve meant that they’d added someone exciting to the Gunmen’s worryingly large global intelligence network. It could’ve meant that STRIKE was after them. Again. It could’ve even meant that Langly had managed to piss off Fury by getting around his firewalls for some juicy bit of intel or other. This time, it was an even rarer type of call. And it was the kind Fox liked best.

“Mulder! I just heard some scuttlebutt about an 084 in White Mountain National Park in New Hampshire. The word is that S.H.I.E.L.D. is trying to get their paws on the case, but the Park Service wants a more domestic agency to handle it. If you manage to slip in there; you could take jurisdiction and steal it right out from under them!” Byers voice had the edge to it that meant he was a few cold brews separated from his full mind, but Fox couldn’t find it in himself to ask about it at that moment.

“Do you have any details?” He stumbled around his living room, phone on speaker. He knew he had work pants _somewhere_ in there. Now, if he could remember where they were…

“Frohike managed to get some from one of the new contacts we got. Apparently, it’s some sort of _void_ that spits random junk out at all hours. It just showed up on a trail one day. The rangers said it was one of their busiest ones too; so they’re pretty anxious to get someone to take a look so that they can get the trail back. That, and it started to spit out Emerald Ash Borers in the third hour or so,” Byers slowed down.

“Anything else?” Fox had finally managed to find his pants and ran his hands through his pockets before he remembered he’d put his actual phone on the charger before he’d tried, and failed, to sleep.

“Yeah. Langly said to keep an eye out. He managed to get into some weird sub-network in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s communications array for a few minutes. Most of it was encrypted gibberish, but he did get some usable intel out of it. They were mostly talking about moving some sort of asset back to DC from Odessa. He didn’t manage to get a name, but he said it might be some sort of Red Room left over. So watch your back.”

Fox’s eyebrows furrowed. The last time Langly had said that, a Black Widow had shown up. Granted, he hadn’t been anywhere he wasn’t supposed to be. That still wasn’t on his bucket list of experiences he wanted to repeat. Langly had gone to ground deep when he’d told them the name she gave him, and the rest of the Gunmen had gone with him. They’d resurfaced months later with new identities, a new workshop and warehouse for their servers, and a whole lot more dirt than they usually dug up in one go. Langly hadn’t used a phone, gone anywhere near any kind of smart device he couldn’t control, or been within a mile of the warehouse when they used anything satellite based for almost a year after they’d returned. That’d gained even more infamy between the four of them than the Susanne Modeski Incident. All that to say, if Langly said duck and cover; it was a good idea to duck and cover. Just in case. The Red Room hadn’t played games and neither had STRIKE, for that matter.

Fox thanked Byers and hung up. This was the first time in five months he’d gotten the chance to deal with an 084 before S.H.I.E.L.D. could scuttle it off to the Icebox, or the Slingshot, or some other colorfully named secret facility. He didn’t know how they’d move an inter-dimensional void that spat out random junk on an irregular basis. But knowing S.H.I.E.L.D., they’d find a way. He rushed through the DC traffic, thumbs jittering on the steering wheel. He’d shot a text off to Scully before he’d even gotten out of his building. Hopefully she was awake and would be there. Even if she wasn’t, if he’d read her right, she wouldn’t miss a chance like this. A twinge of guilt threaded through him. That still stung. She was right, but it stung. The good news was, she wasn’t mad anymore. Even if he did still feel guilty.

He wouldn’t apologize or reign it in around other people, though. That was too much trust to give with the things he knew seared into him like his own name. It was a matter of survival, even if she didn’t see it then. He stretched his senses as he drove. The bubble expanded and other people’s emotions pressed against the barrier. Most of them were just tired, bored, or annoyed. That was pretty common on a major road. There were a lot more fuzzy pictures of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents than normal. He couldn’t catch much. They were always difficult to get a read on unless he was right in front of them anyway. The bubble stretched like a muscle. The dull ache from keeping it contained faded away from behind his eyes and left him clearer then he’d felt in days. Keeping his power contained never really worked past making his range a lot shorter. It was like he told Scully. The Reading hadn’t come with an off switch.

Still, he closed his field in once he reached the parking garage. His range covered around three quarters of the building if he let it go, and the whole thing if he really pushed. That sort of Reading spread him way too thin and left him feeling nauseous and violated for at least a few weeks afterwards. His own intentions became a mystery until it cleared. He checked his real phone, and there Scully was. She’d texted that she’d be there, plus some more colorful turns of phrase. He snickered, and jogged to the elevator, keyed up with adrenaline and endorphins from stretching the bubble. He felt it snap like a rubber band when it was as close as he could get it and he relaxed a little. The Hoover building was not a fun place to be that exposed in.

He jittered the whole elevator ride up and then the whole elevator ride down to his office. He rifled through the X files until he hit on the one he’d been looking for. It was a joint investigation between S.H.I.E.L.D. and the FBI that hadn’t yielded much before it’d somehow resolved itself. It was another inter-dimensional void that’d shown up one day in some tiny desert town out in the middle of nowhere. In all fairness, the town was infamous for a near constant stream of very secret S.H.I.E.L.D. reports and files and X files. One of the more notable was some phenomenon called a “glow cloud” that’d dropped road kill on the town for a few hours. That wasn’t even the most interesting one, but the inter-dimensional void was serious enough to get S.H.I.E.L.D., the FBI, Homeland Security, and the NSA’s attention. All in one go. From that town, that was a record.

Unfortunately, all of the equipment had malfunctioned or died as soon as they got into the town limits. So, most of the reports were just blurry phone camera photos or eyewitness reports. If Byers’ intel was good (which it almost always was), this was the same phenomenon; except this time, it was in a place that wouldn’t kill all of the equipment. He jumped on his computer and picked the earliest slot he could get onSkinner’s schedule. He wasn’t going to let that shot slip through his fingers.

Scully swept in a few minutes after he’d confirmed the appointment and raised her eyebrows.

“What’s going on?”

“Pack your bags Scully. Once we get the go ahead, we’re going to New Hampshire. There’s an object of unknown origin in the White Mountain National Park that S.H.I.E.L.D. is having a spat with our great country over the question of who gets the house. We’re going in on behalf of the United Stated government to investigate as the dedicated civil servants we’re payed to be.” He slid the file over to her and she pored over the pictures and witness statements.

“An inter-dimensional void. That spits out random things. In a _mathematically_ random pattern. Isn’t this the sort of thing S.H.I.E.L.D. or the X-Men are supposed to handle?” Her face was in that near artisanal unimpressed look and he couldn’t resist a smile.

“Scully! A true 084! One that S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t have jurisdiction over yet. One that’s the kind of thing that the X-Men don’t have any fix for yet! Come on! Aren’t you the least bit curious about it?” The flat look told him all he needed to know. He didn’t need to Read her to know she was as curious as he was about the mysterious void.

***

“Agent Mulder, I do not want to spend the rest of my life on the phone with Nick Fury or Maria Hill explaining why my agents took jurisdiction over an 084 that S.H.I.E.L.D. already clocked hours ago.” AD Skinner’s face was even flatter then Scully’s. Fox knew, the same way he knew everything else about people that Skinner would let them go. He hadn’t been paying that close of attention to it, but it clicked away in the back of his head. Scully picked up his slack.

“Sir, this phenomenon has happened more than a few times previously, just domestically. It could be an invaluable opportunity to get potentially lifesaving information about the void. Anything S.H.I.E.L.D. gathers will just be kept internally. We already know that from what they’ve done with the information they got from the other occurrences,” she said, voice glass smooth in her professional mode.

Skinner let off what could’ve almost been called a sigh.

“You two had better get results. I am not going to bat with Hill for no information or nothing to show for it.”

They “yes sir”-ed their way out of his office and Scully pursed her lips at him.

“How did you manage to hear about an 084 before Skinner did?” She asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Fox gave his best steel-wall smile. “I have powers,” he laughed. She scoffed and he relaxed a little more.

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Yeah.”

Fox couldn’t contain his excitement.

***

Fox’s phone rang at the most inconvenient times. For instance, when he was waist deep in his clothes with less than seven minutes to finish packing if he wanted to have enough time to get through security. He dropped everything and rooted through the chaos to find his burner. Only three people had that number, and he hoped that they weren’t calling because STRIKE had discovered Langly’s snooping. Again. It went right under S.H.I.E.L.D.’s collective nose most of the time, but there was always the potential for disaster. Agent Rumlow was a bit of a nightmare to get off someone’s scent once he caught wind of blood.

“I got more,” Langly’s mild Russian accent was exaggerated by the phone speaker.

“You get a name?” Fox asked as he threw his bag on his shoulder and got ready to leave.

“No, they didn’t say. I did get some specs for what Frohike said looked like a cryo-tube, and orders for maintenance to be carried out. Whoever they’re moving is probably in rough shape. Chatter is, it was the Widow in Odessa.”

“The Widow?” Fox searched the bubble for eavesdroppers as he walked towards the elevator.

“Either the Widow or the Bird. Byers asked around, though, and everybody said the Bird was still in his nest.”

“Good to know.” Clint Barton was…unsettling was a word for it. He’d been almost as blurry and hard to put together as the Widow.

“I also found some deep dirt on whatever the hell Ross is up to out in the desert.”

“Super-Soldier serum again?”

“Sort of. I’m going to have to run it by one of our contacts, but it looks like a high energy radiation based attempt. Even more than the original Vita-Ray experiment. They’ve got Banner,” Langly said.

That was bad. In fact, bad was an understatement. If they had someone like Bruce Banner there, then the serum was close enough for whatever tests Ross had planned to make disappearing the west’s leading nuclear physicist a justified risk. Fox gulped, suddenly sweaty despite the cold outside of his building.

“Hear anything about a trial?”

Langly sighed before he answered. “Not yet, but anything coming out of that hellhole will be a little slow anyway. People are about as friendly as we are over there.”

“Alright. Thanks for the heads up. Let me know if you find a name for whatever asset they’re transporting over here. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

The line went dead and Fox tossed the phone. Another rule of engagement. A new burner would magically show up outside of wherever he stayed. He wasn’t unconvinced that either Byers or Frohike wasn’t a mutant with speed or teleporting powers.

***

“Are you serious, Mulder?” Scully glared at him. S.H.I.E.L.D. SUVs and trucks were in the parking lot across the road from the trail. Rangers were stationed at the trailhead. They’d had to flash their badges just to get across the little covered bridge up the road from the trail.

“Come on, Scully. The Ranger Service wants the people who handle this to be domestic. So we’ve already got a reason to be here. It’s not like Glacier.” Fox had been ready to go since they’d landed. He hadn’t been this excited for something in a while. That aside, parks always did him some good. Even the popular trails had fewer people around than anywhere that could be found in a city like DC, let alone anywhere else. Scully’s not-actual-annoyance-annoyance brushed against the back of his mind. He shut that line down as fast as he could, but it was still reassuring that she wasn’t _actually_ going to toss him out of a moving car. Yet.

The rangers guarding the trailhead almost looked relieved when they saw their badges. He stretched his bubble out again and felt the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents ahead. Nice and blurry without a face to face. Beyond that, however, was the single most fascinating dead spot he’d ever had the pleasure of experiencing. If he Read it right, that was the void. It was a completely dead spot in his vision.He was so enthralled that Scully’d had to keep him from tripping and falling down the steep hill they’d just climbed. She had the pinched look on her face she always got when he was Reading. Another twinge of guilt hit him and he started to reel it in.

“What does it feel like?” Her question came so out of left field he was actually struck a little dumb.

“The void?” Not the most articulate thing he’d ever pulled together. Scully was, apparently, an expert at cutting to the important questions. Given what she’d been able to pull from him in the time that they’d known each other. It wasn’t fair that she could force him to just _talk_ so easily. She hadn’t even dignified his last answer with a response. He was going to tell her anyway. The why wasn’t something he wanted to examine while she was standing there staring at him.

“It feels like an empty spot in the middle of a bunch of people. It’s almost like there’s nothing there.”

She nodded and he could almost hear her brain clicking away for an explanation. He didn’t really have one either, aside from randomly appearing inter-dimensional void. His mind ran wild with the possibility of someone or something being behind it. Granted, there were mutants who could open up portals to other places and times. But none of the documented cases of Porters ever recorded anything as sustained and randomly occurring as these voids were. Plus, none of them were ever _voids_. They were wormholes. That was an important distinction.

He ran through the case that’d happened in New York a few years ago as they walked. It’d shown up the same way as the one they were going to see. No warnings, no fuss, it was just there for no reason. In predictable New York fashion, the locals had made a big deal over it for about five minutes before going on with their lives. There were a lot of mutants and enhanced people in New York City. Weird stuff happened almost every day anyway, so most of them hadn’t really cared all that much. Well, they hadn’t cared all that much outside of a low level, collective annoyance about the random junk it spat at them. S.H.I.E.L.D. had swooped in and they’d been more annoyed about the sidewalk being blocked off than anything else. One of them had actually told the agent in charge that they were more of a disturbance than the void was. Although, it’d been noted in the file that it had been relatively early in the morning at the time. So it was a bit fuzzy whether that was sleep deprivation talking or not. Either way, the void had disappeared and S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t released any information about the case until they’d suffered a minor leak from an unscrupulous HammerTech employee digging where they shouldn’t have been. The Gunmen had found it hilarious at the time. The file had would up in Fox’s lap alongside a lot of other buried S.H.I.E.L.D. cases with 084s involved.

He zoned back in as soon as they got close to the S.H.I.E.L.D. people at the top. He probably would’ve been able to hear them even without his powers. They were all being quite vocal. It sounded (felt, who was he kidding) like they’d been at it for a while, too. He and Scully looked at each other before they hoofed it up the rise to where they void was. As he’d expected, S.H.I.E.L.D. had already set up a perimeter and he could see agents standing guard with some strange looking guns. Maybe those were the ones from the specs Frohike had dug up a year ago.

Scully’s face got grimmer the closer they got to the whole set up. Deep in his bones, Fox felt the same way. That was mostly because he’d seen who was in charge of the whole set up. That didn’t bode well for them.

The man was deceptively ordinary. He wasn’t tall or short. He didn’t have so many muscles that nothing else mattered, but wasn’t out of shape either. He projected waves of near serenity. In short, he was the person Fox had least wanted to be in charge of the shindig he and Scully were trying to hijack. Mostly because Fox couldn’t help but like that particular S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, despite himself. The man was at the very least direct; and that sort of thing went a long way.

“Agent Coulson,” Fox greeted him as soon as they reached the perimeter.

Coulson, for his part, looked nonplussed. Unflappable.

“Agent Mulder, Agent Scully. Welcome to the White Mountains. I’d ask how you heard about this, but I don’t think that’s the biggest issue right now. How much have you managed to find out?” He was as professional and dry as if he were just asking them a job interview question.

“Just the basics. Is it still spitting out the ash borers?” Fox tried to peer around him to see the void with his eyes. The black spot in the bubble was more disconcerting than he thought it’d be close up.

“It isn’t spitting out anything right now. That’s the problem. When it’s not doing anything it’s just a blank spot on all of our equipment. We-”

“Sir!” AS.H.I.E.L.D. scientist ran out from the tent, eyes wide. She stopped short as soon as she saw Fox and Scully and her eyes darted to Coulson. She hesitated, visibly considering whether or not she should keep talking before she came forward.

“Yes, Dr. Gould?” Coulson looked back at her, his voice the same smooth, professional tone as it’d been the whole time.

“Agent Coulson, sir. There’s some sort of energy field that’s affecting the void. We have no idea what it is, but it seems like the void is almost… Like the void is almost trying to eat it sir. The interaction is on a completely different dynamic. Almost like it’s a brand new type of energy. Or like the source is different. The closest thing I can think of is like when we had Agent Valerio try their resonating energy on it.” She gestured wildly as she explained, her body almost vibrating with excitement.

Fox had to force himself to pay attention as Scully interrogated her about what her instruments had picked up. It wasn’t as much as he’d feared. They couldn’t tell where the new energy had come from, or why. But it was only a matter of time. He tried to pull the bubble in further and a migraine instantly started to pulse away behind his eye with every adrenaline fueled beat of his heart. He’d been around the kind of equipment they had on the site before. He’d made sure to ask Byers about that after they’d landed. But he hadn’t thought the void would interact with him. He hadn’t even had a whisper of an idea that that would happen.

“We’ll just have to look,” Coulson’s voice broke into the spiral.

“With respect, sir, wouldn’t it be more effective to monitor it when it’s active?” There was Scully. Fox couldn’t tell if she was covering for him, or if that’s what she actually thought. He guessed that was the whole point anyway.

“A sweep of the surrounding area’s the responsible thing to do here. If there’s someone unauthorized in the woods, that’s could be a major issue. Especially if the void decides to release something dangerous. More dangerous,” Coulson called one of the guards over and within seconds a group of them was heading out to search.

Scully looked over at him and Fox tried to keep the concern off of his face. He’d been in worse situations. Granted, they weren’t coming to mind at the moment. But he’d absolutely gotten out of worse situations. As long as he kept it off his face, he’d be fine. She pursed her lips and jerked her head at Dr. Gould and Coulson who were walking towards the tent they’d hidden the void in.

“You know what, Scully. I’m going to see if any of the rangers saw anything. Could be they don’t even realize they saw something useful.” He resisted the temptation to wince at how unsteady his voice sounded. From the look on Scully’s face it was even worse than it’d sounded.

“Okay.” Her face was a mask as she turned to follow Coulson and Gould to the tent.

“Make sure to get readings on our equipment before they kick us out!” He called after her. Best to at least try to act normal. Coulson was a spy, whether he looked like it or not.

Fox wished for the excedrine he’d left in the car. Not that it would’ve helped, but it would’ve taken the edge off. The world was too bright. Everything was so loud, but he didn’t dare stretch out. They could see him around the void, that much was clear. He hadn’t hidden his whole life just to get caught out with a mistake as stupid as that one. Damn the pain, he’d grit his teeth and get through it. He could hear a voice that sounded disturbingly like Scully telling him to stop being stupid and just let it go. He’d come too far for that. This was the first time in his entire career that he hadn’t been thrown out of a situation like this outright. He wasn’t going to compromise that for anything. Besides, Skinner might actually kill him if he didn’t stick it out; and contrary to popular belief, he didn’t want to die. Even if it looked that way sometimes. Like at the moment, for example.

He forcibly ignored the pressure that was building behind his eye and walked over to one of the rangers. The guy looked like he could see the trees getting eaten around their ears. Dark circles complemented a rumpled uniform and dark stubble coming up. Fox felt a very familiar sense of exhaustion and resignation against the barrier between his emotions and everyone else’s. It probably wasn’t a good thing that that sort of sensation was more comfortable than the cool calm everyone else was projecting.

“Hi, Agent Mulder with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Were you one of the rangers who reported this phenomenon?” At least he could still summon the wherewithal to sound professional.

“Ranger Williams, yeah. I was inspecting the trail, and it just appeared right in front of me,” he said. His eyes were dull and he looked almost hollow. He didn’t look Fox in the eye and kept picking at his cuticles.

“Did you notice anything unusual before that happened?” Fox made sure Williams saw him start a recording on his phone.

“It was a little colder than normal, but there really wasn’t anything weird going on. The animals were all acting normal, everything was totally fine. And then that-that _thing_ just appeared! I almost walked into it.” He hunched his shoulders. The sense pricked Fox in the back of the head.

“Are you alright? Have you seen anyone?”

Williams hunched even more. “Who’s going to believe me. Besides, S.H.I.E.L.D. forced all of us to sign something. We can’t say anything to anyone without clearance. Their doctor said I was fine anyway.”

“There’s a whole network of people S.H.I.E.L.D. and government agents work with. If it’s possible, you should really try to find one. This kind of thing can be really disturbing, especially if you don’t have any prior experience. They can’t force you not to talk to someone with proper clearance. Agent Coulson should have a list.” Even as he said it, Fox knew Williams wasn’t going to do it.

“I’m more concerned with what this is going to do to the surrounding environment. There’s already been a major impact from how popular this trail’s been getting. This is just going to make it worse. Even without the ash borers that _thing_ spat out, there’s going to be a lot of traffic because of this. Those agents are already damaging the ground flora around here.” Williams sounded more alive than he had the whole rest of the conversation. That wasn’t a very high bar.

“I know you guys don’t really monitor who goes on the trails, but did you see anyone suspicious when you were walking the trail?”

“Nobody weird came through. Everyone I saw was just a normal hiker. I didn’t see any kind of sci-fi stuff like they’ve got going on in that tent and there weren’t any mutants or anyone like that. Not that I could see anyway. You never know.” Fox had been waiting for that.

“Have you seen anyone since? Anything you think could be tied to it at all?” He asked. The exhaustion coming in from Williams was getting stifling, even with the barrier keeping the worst of it away from Fox’s own emotions. The sunlight seemed even more painful than before. The shade was barely helping anymore.

“No. There’s been nothing. There’s no reason. There’s just no reason for it!” Williams’ voice went ragged at the end and Fox could feel how badly this had already eaten away at the man. He consciously ignored the uncomfortable parallel to his worse nights in the X File cabinets. He could feel Scully scowling at him for it.

“This phenomenon tends to be independent of that sort of thing. It usually just appears and resolves without anything really happening to explain why. I know it doesn’t really help, but you weren’t targeted for this. It’s just random, very unlucky chance. The good news is that this never happens in the same place twice.”

Williams nodded and his lips thinned. “Why here?” His voice was thick with the strain.

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Fox said. He gave Williams his number and advised him to ask Coulson for the list again before he moved on.

He didn’t see any of the other rangers who Williams had called to investigate around. He wasn’t up to trying to get answers out of one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. guards right now. The effort of keeping the bubble contained was wearing away at him by the minute. He wanted to see the void, but even thinking about trying to suck in more made his entire body hurt. The migraine wasn’t going to go away for at least a day as it was. He’d forgotten how bad that sort of restraint got. How had he gotten so spoiled anyway?

***

“We need to find some way to see how your ability affects the void without S.H.I.E.L.D. finding out.” Scully had been on fire trying to find possible explanations for the void since she’d seen it. This line was making Fox glad he’d swept his room for bugs before they’d started pooling their knowledge. The migraine was still alive and well and every beat of his heart was a centimeter away from making his eyes water. Everything was too bright.

“Mulder?” He’d taken to long to respond. How lagged behind was he? He couldn’t even tell anymore.

“Sorry. That might be helpful, but we’re going to have to come up with something irresistible to get them away from the void. Even then, Coulson is legendary for being able to multitask investigations.”

Scully gave him an incredulous look, eyebrow raised and eyes flint sharp. “Mulder. You break into army and S.H.I.E.L.D. data bases all the time. The data we get from that sort of test could help us figure out why the void works the way to does. It could provide some sort of solid evidence about why this thing functions the way it does! Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“I can’t risk revealing myself, Scully. I don’t know what they do to the people on the Index, but I know they chip and monitor them. And that’s only the beginning. There’s a reason Dr. Xavier doesn’t let S.H.I.E.L.D. or the government anywhere near his school. If they find me out, I will never be able to keep hidden again. I will be tracked and followed to the day I die. They might even disappear me. I’m not going to be made into one of Ross’s toys.” As soon as it was out, he knew he’d said too much. His body ached. The icepick kept hammering away behind his eye. He couldn’t even find the energy to care that he’d just slipped. The Reading hadn’t punished him this badly in years. He couldn’t remember how he’d managed to do schoolwork in this condition.

“Mulder, what’s wrong?” Scully moved in front of the lamp. Small mercies indeed. He couldn’t help how much tension had drained out of him as soon as the light was blocked. Her vice was softer and gentler than it had any right to be.

“Nothing, Scully. It’s just a headache. I’m fine.” He rubbed his eyes. That was a mistake. He could feel bile in his throat.

“Mulder.” There was no room for argument with that tone. Not unless he wanted to get into a discussion he didn’t have anywhere near enough energy to deal with.

“I haven’t held it in like that for a while, that’s all. I’ll be fine tomorrow.” She looked as skeptical as she ever did when he told her something she thought was unbelievable. It was a little weird to have that look directed at him for what he’d just said.

“Are you sure we should be on this case? You’re going to have to keep holding it in, right?”

He nodded and gave a bone deep sigh. She was right on the nose. As per usual.

“I haven’t had a chance like this in my whole career. I’ve gotten to 084s first, but the chance to work with S.H.I.E.L.D.? The chance to see exactly what they withhold in the official file? It’s worth whatever I’m going to have to do. It’ll be so much easier to know where to look once I see how they choose what they’re going to leave in on a case like this. We won’t get another chance like this.” Even he could hear how thin his voice had gotten. He was a steadfast as he could be, considering that he felt like he’d been crushed by a semi. Twice.

She sighed and shook her head, feet shifting.

“Alright. It’s your call, but I think this is going to get dangerous for you. Faster than you think it will.” She turned off one of the lamps as she spoke and settled into the armchair next to the bed. She wasn’t wrong. Not that he was going to say that.

“We’ll find a way to get that test. I’ve got some contacts that do that sort of thing for fun.”

He was genuinely surprised that she let him change the subject that way.

***

“You want us to distract Coulson?” The unholy glee in Langly’s voice wasn’t as unsettling as it probably should’ve been.

“If you can. Scully has a test she wants to run and we need all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. people gone for it to work,” Fox said. He already regretted his life choices with this case. A little more wasn’t going to kill him.

“It’ll be a pleasure. I’ve been waiting for a shot since Nepal.” Fox both was and wasn’t surprised that Langly was still mad about that. Nobody held a grudge quite like someone who’d been forced into the kind of work Langly had. Nepal had been pretty bad, though. Even the normal newspapers and websites had heard about that blowout. He was a little concerned about Coulson’s safety and wellbeing now that he thought about it.

“Give me a timeline and I’ll get started. Frohike says we’ve got people in the area, so it shouldn’t be a problem at all.” The sound of Langly’s fingers flying over a keyboard came over behind his voice.

“I’ll put it in the dropbox with the stuff Scully managed to get. Keep an eye on the official file for this case and let me know what they change?”

“You mean look for any mention of you and your thing. No problem. I’ve already got the filing number for the case anyway.” Byers voice made Fox jump.

“Anything interesting?” He asked as he prayed for his heartbeat to slow down. He could deal with the migraine and his pulse making it worse. But not if it kept going like that.

“Nothing worth talking about. So far it’s all been the same as the others. Fury is taking a personal interest though. So we’re going to dig in a little further and see what we can find. They did say that it seems to be more active at night, though; so you two should get some independent data about that before it disappears.”

Fox tried to decide if it’d be worth the pain to get up for some water.

“Anything else?”

“Ross hasn’t made any progress from what we’ve heard. Another one of the unregistered people we’ve been talking to disappeared, and we’re pretty sure it was him again. There’s been chatter about him collecting people who aren’t on the Index and using them to formulate the serum. Nothing we have evidence for yet, but we’re probably not going to find any barring a miracle. The good news is that he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to this case, even if Fury and Pierce have both been watching it. If they get a whiff of you, Ross might start to pay attention. So watch your back.”

A chill went down Fox’s spine. The whispers about the Raft and Ross’s Toolbox had gotten louder over the past few months. Xavier had been making noise about it, but nobody who could look into Ross legally was going to listen to an old mutant who was a glorified school principal in their eyes. It just wasn’t done.

“Have you heard anything more about what went down in Odessa?” The change in topics was flimsy at best; but he didn’t have the brainpower to deal with that level of paranoia.

“Some physicist got killed. We haven’t found any reason for that kind of attack, but you know how it is. The Spider was definitely hurt bad. There was a paper trail tracking her to their emergency field hospital and then back to Medical in the Triskelion. Frohike and I haven’t gotten any further on the Asset they were transporting, but I got an anonymous tip that whoever it is is in DC. Not that it’s really helpful.” Langly’s voice was bitter, and Fox could hear the keys protesting under his fingers.

“Let me know what you hear.”

***

If the migraine had been bad the day before, the full body ache that took Fox over the next day was near unbearable. His bones felt like glass, his muscles felt like wet paper, and his brain felt like soup. His head didn’t hurt, but he was a little too distracted to be grateful about that. He focused all of his energy on walking normally. It was a lot more challenging than it had any right to be. He was so far in the zone of trying to walk in a way that didn’t make him look sloshed that he didn’t even notice Scully getting close until she was right on top of him.

“Morning,” she said, brusque as ever. He jumped and was filled with instant regret.

He ducked his greeting into his coffee. Sitting was a magical experience. Forget witches, that was all the proof he needed. Scully gave him a weird look and started to talk about the theory she’d come up with. It was a relatively promising one too. He was working under the theory of an Einstein-Rosen Bridge that moved positions. From what he’d seen of Dr. Foster and Dr. Selvig’s work it was a pretty good idea. Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to get a secure line to send them the data they’d need to tell him if it was legitimate. He missed talking to Dr. Foster.

Still, Scully’s idea was at least plausible, and it wasout there compared to her usual fare. He was a little proud, if he was honest.

“A really powerful mutant could sustain something like that easily. Magneto lifted an entire domed stadium by _himself_. That kind of strength is out there. It’s completely possible that a powerful Porter opened a door they couldn’t close. People don’t know their own strength. If they’re a scared kid, they’re not going to tell anyone. And if they’re not, then maybe they don’t even realize they’ve left the door open. Maybe they just open the door and run through without checking. It would make a lot of sense.”

“Why would a mutant want to open a door into the middle of the White Mountains?” He asked. Talking felt like he raked his throat over hot coals, but at least it didn’t sound that way.

“I don’t know, Mulder; maybe they’re on the run. But it’s something we can look for. Someone like that will leave a signature we can trace.”

“If it is a person, are we going to turn them in?” He tried to keep his tone non accusatory. He wasn’t sure how successful he was. That was difficult to figure out when one’s ears felt like they were underwater. The desire to stretch was getting harder to ignore too.

“At this point I don’t think we’d have a choice. I mean, this has crossed the line into being dangerous. Even just the case in New York. We have an obligation. I know it’s not really right, but we can’t just let them Port where they want if they can’t close the door behind them. The things that’ve come out have been at best destructive and at worst lethal. That can’t stand. I know you don’t like it, but it’s too much of a risk not to. Besides, you think I’m wrong anyway,” she said. She was matter of fact and she wasn’t any more aggressive with her breakfast than usual. He still couldn’t help feel like he’d pushed her. Again.

“You might be right. To be honest, I have no idea what’s going on. Nobody really has a solid theory. At this point it might be better to just follow what we’ve got and see where it goes.”

She gave him a suspicious look. Her eyes cut him down to the bone and he felt like he was the one being Read.

“What’s wrong,” she asked. Her face was flat and her shoulders were set.

“It’s nothing. It’s just a hangover from holding it in yesterday. I’ll be fine once the coffee kicks in.”

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips, but didn’t push. After a shake of her head she went back to her breakfast. Those poor oats suffered a tragedy.

***

Dr. Gould was waiting for them when they got back up the section of trail. True to his word, Fox felt a little less like death. But that didn’t mean he was remotely ready for another day of sucking in. Too bad. Dr. Gould was lit up like the Triskelion during an intelligence conference. Byers had said she had a reputation for being quick on the uptake and discrete. In other words: a serious risk for Fox to be around, especially in the state he was in at the moment.

“It spat out librettos for The Magic Flute last night. Perfect replicas of an 1800 performance. The best part is that the material has been confirmed as the exact same used for a libretto or a program at the time. We also got a sample of the air that came out when it started spitting paper at us and it was pre atomic age! It’s a space-time portal!”

Fox could almost hear the gears in his and Scully’s brains grind to a halt.

“You’re sure?” Scully recovered first.

“Positive. It was amazing. We’ve never managed to get that kind of data before. It was seriously a miracle,” Dr. Gould said, eyes aglow.

“Could I get a look at your readings?” Scully was all business.

As the two of them walked towards the void’s tent, Fox felt a strange draw to it. He couldn’t tear his senses away from the sphere of pure _emptiness_ that sat inside the little quarantined hut. Whatever pull he’d felt towards it the day before had doubled and it took all his willpower not to get sucked in. If he listened hard enough he could almost swear that there was something intelligent in the bridge. He could feel something coming out of it. Something smart, something dark, and it was crawling towards their little camp on the mountain. It took the sensation of worms burying themselves in his brain to get him to shake himself loose.

He tried to pull his bubble tighter, but the excruciating pain that shot through his entire body forced him to release it. He could barely hold the real Reading away from where the void sat. It was just a vague murmur at the edge of his circle. Even that was almost too much for his sense after whatever the hell that’d been. He drifted around the bubble and felt unease coming from every person in it. And for once, that wasn’t his fault.

He came back to himself when Coulson emerged from the tent. He looked as rumpled as Ranger Williams had the day before and his eyes were glassy behind the facade of nonchalance he wore like armor. As soon as Coulson saw him, he beelined over to Fox. The nonchalance had been overwritten by determination.

“What do you know?” Coulson didn’t raise his voice. He barely even changed his tone. But the Agent was out in full force.

“Nothing more than you. All I know is that every time this happened, no one could figure out why or how to close it. It always just disappeared. There was never any warning or anything. It was just there one minute. And then it wasn’t.”

Coulson’s face pinched. It was the only expression that wasn’t Agent Coulson Fox had ever seen on the man’s face. He didn’t like what that meant.

“There’s something _wrong_ with it this time. It wasn’t like this in New York. The stuff it spat out was the same, but it didn’t feel like it watched you. It didn’t feel like it was alive. I don’t care how you know whatever you know. I’m here to _contain_ this and keep people safe. So you need to tell us everything you’ve got. Now.”

Fox hesitated. His brain mulled it over like molasses. His bones ached in a symphony of shattered glass. His head _hurt_. He could still feel whatever it was in his brain, sticky like pine pitch. He thought, and thought, and thought, and couldn’t think at all. The void was all consuming and stared into him, just waiting for him to get that littlest bit closer-. No. He wasn’t going. He wasn’t getting any closer to the damned thing.

“It needs telepaths,” the second the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were true. Just like how he knew everything else about everyone he’d ever met.

“It doesn’t have the strength to get out of that pit itself. So it made a mystery. It used itself as bait and it waited until someone with the right kind of energy could pull it out.” The words came out with more conviction than he had the energy for. And it was all true.

“What is it?” Coulson was quiet, his face an unreadable mask. That didn’t matter. Fox knew he believed him. He knew that as soon as he’d heard everything Fox had to say, he was going to seal the place off from everyone on the Index with any sort of psychic sensitivity until the void went away. He was going to report to the Director and tell him the trail was dangerous for any living thing until circumstances changed. Fox could see everything Coulson was going to do laid bare like a picture book. He couldn’t remember why he closed himself off from this all the time. He could see everything every single person around him would do if he did anything. He could tell which of them was stopping herself from fidgeting. He knew that the two closest to them were searching for an animal they’d heard in the underbrush off the trail. He could feel- He could feel Scully.

Her presence near him popped the bubble from its expansion and dumped him in ice water. She was giving him a concerned look. He could see her resisting from looking between him and Coulson.

“You okay?” She asked, putting herself in front of him. A knot of tension he hadn’t felt before released the smallest bit.

“We’re fine, Agent Scully. Do you have any guesses about the void?” Coulson had recovered as smoothly as though nothing had happened at all. Fox’s entire body hurt again and the migraine was back behind his eye. He felt almost dizzy with how lopsided the world looked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d let himself tune out like that. The entire world was too bright with emotions around him and he couldn’t even hear Scully talking in front of him. All the energy he had left was focused on one thing alone: making himself look like nothing even the littlest bit interesting had just happened.

Scully was guiding him away from the center to where they’d dug the squatty potties. He tripped and stumbled along. He didn’t know why his feet felt so numb. Withdrawal from Reading had never sapped that much from him before. The intelligence hadn’t been there the day before.It didn’t make any _sense_. Scully’s face was close to his and she was looking up at him with all the righteous fury of a doctor.

“What was that,” her demeanor was surprisingly soft for how angry she looked.

“It was a fugue. I wasn’t awake.” He hoped she could read between the lines. He’d never had to explain before. No one was safe. She wasn’t safe, but he knew she was. It was written all over her. He could still hear it in the back of his head with everything else.

“Are you awake now?”

“I don’t know.” He still felt the pull from the void. Pine pitch was sticky all over his thoughts.

“Tell me.”

“There’s something evil in there Scully. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not gonna stop. If it doesn’t get someone here, it’ll just keep trying until someone listens.”

Scully kept staring into him. Her eyes cut in and he resisted the urge to squirm. He wasn’t sure he had the energy for that anyway.

After an uncomfortable minute, she pulled away and sighed. She looked down, squared her shoulders, and nodded to herself. As soon as she looked back up, every sign of weakness was gone. Her face was an impenetrable mask of professionalism. Her eyes were cold, hard adamantium.

“Okay. Then we’ll deal with it. Whatever _it_ is.” She stalked away and he trailed after her. He couldn’t parse why he felt like he needed to, but the back of his mind clicked away and he couldn’t stop himself from walking in her wake.

He heard her give Coulson a much clearer picture of what he’d seen and a list of suggestions. The entire center moved around them as soon as she was done. Coulson gave his orders. His eyes never left them, but to be fair, they hadn’t left Fox and Scully the entire time they’d been on site to begin with. Fox watched everyone swirl. It was the same type of chaos as the basement of the Hoover building, but he didn’t know it anywhere near as well. Scully stood near him, her eyes hard. She looked every inch the agent she was. It was impressive, given the g-men they were surrounded by.

Finally Fox found what his brain had been trying to get him to see. One of the guards had some type of sphere. He was right in front of the tent and his whole presence was glacial. He was as blurry as everyone else, but that object was as sharp and defined as anything. Fox tapped Scully and she glanced up at him before she followed his line of sight. She got it in an instant.

“Is that what’s causing this?” Fox nodded. That was all she needed.

Fox braced himself as she flagged down Coulson. As he walked over, he was trailed by Dr. Gould.

“What’ve you got?” His tone was as unchangeable as ever. At least some things were still normal.

“That guy, over there by the tent. Don’t look, just watch,” Fox said. Coulson’s lips pursed like he was resisting the urge to laugh. Dr. Gould peered over from behind Coulson’s shoulder.

“I’ve got it.” He said.

If Fox hadn’t known Coulson was doing something, he wouldn’t have been able to tell. Calm as you please, he walked over and started talking to the guard. The one who’d been subtly stalking Coulson crept over as they spoke and more appeared from what looked like thin air. Coulson kept the guy occupied until it was too late. His guard jumped the guy and slammed him full body to the ground. Two more came forward to restrain him and another jumped forward to catch the sphere before it rolled down the hill. It all took less than thirty seconds, and then the sphere was in Coulson’s hands.

***

Regardless of however miserable Fox felt on a personal basis, he hadn’t forgotten what he’d asked Langly to do. He waited in the car and chugged a super-caffeinated virgin redeye while he waited. True to his word, Langly was right on time (as per usual, he was always on the dot, spotless). The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, accompanied by Coulson, went screaming out of the park towards whatever monstrosity the Gunmen had cooked up. Fox forced himself to move. The small hike up the hill was torture, but he managed it. Rather than the tests Scully had wanted to do (screw that) he copied everything onto one of the drives the Gunmen had given him. It took longer than he’d expected, but he’d built in twice the amount of time he and Scully would’ve needed for the test, so it was fine. He didn’t like being near the void, but the caffeine helped more than he thought.

That said, he barely managed to get back to his car before the first one returned. He wasn’t sure they’d seen him, and he didn’t have the energy to care. The hike and being near the void had wiped him out all over again. All he wanted was to go to sleep until their flight back to DC, but he had one more errand to do. Okay, he had two more errands to do before he could get to know the backs of his eyelids. That was, if his brain let him sleep. That was always a question.

***

“Where did you _get_ this?!” Scully’s face was incredulous as she looked over the data he’d gotten. It detailed everything from the second S.H.I.E.L.D. had arrived on site to the second the struggle for the sphere had happened. It even had the readings from the sphere for good measure.

“Never mind, the less you tell me the better. I don’t want to know how many laws you broke to get it.”

The device she was reading off of was courtesy of the Gunmen. He’d forgotten he’d had it in his bag of he was honest. It’d been a stroke of luck to find it riding around on the bottom of his luggage. It had been even more of a stroke of luck that it hadn’t been smashed to bits from riding around in the bottom of said luggage. Either way, it was there. And as soon as he’d figured out what it was he’d called Scully to his room. He had no idea what time it was, and he was so tired that his world was burring around the edges, but that didn’t matter. The stuff that was on that drive was too important.

“This is crazy!” She was on fire. She scrolled through it all faster than he could get his eyes to track. So he just sat back and let her at it. The medical section wouldn’t have made much sense anyway. Nothing would’ve made much sense, really, but he was trying to ignore that.

“I’m going to have to go over all of this later. Are we-can we. Is it possible to keep this?” She sounded resigned. To be fair, the answer had always been ‘no’ before.

“I’ll get you a copy. You can’t spread it anywhere yet, though. We can’t lead S.H.I.E.L.D. back to us. But we can keep it.” It was a mark of how excited she really was that Scully didn’t question who the other copy was going to go to. He could almost hear Byers crowing about everything on it already. The man lived to pull one over on the World Security Council.

Fox plotted out the dead drop while he idly watched the words scroll by at mach speed on the display. The flight would be a risk, but a drop in the middle of North Conway meant that the data would go nowhere fast. Fox was too excited for a delay like that. He was also a bit too nervous for the delay too. He didn’t get the chance to see how much his and Scully’s interference had been mentioned, and the warnings about Ross and his poaching were pounding away behind his eyes as badly as his migraine had the last night.

“Mulder, look at this.” Scully’s voice was dead serious.

Fox looked at the display and resisted the instant recoil that shot through him. The creature on the screen looked like an elf that had been put through a rock crusher. The features were so misaligned and scarred Fox could hardly tell what anything was. The skin was the purplish-pink of a deep, new bruise and was ruddy and covered in scar tissue. Half of an ear was missing. Hair grew in fits and starts over a scalp that was covered in bumps, lumps, and runs. That wasn’t what made Fox want to start running and never stop. It was the eyes. They were as cold and empty as the void had been. The display around the creature’s body wasn’t black. It was pure emptiness. He was sure he’d never seen anything as empty as the screen around the creature. They were snarling. At least, it looked like they were snarling.

“The story says that Captain Rogers and the Howling Commandos ran into this creature in the Italian theater. HYDRA had it on the field and they said that it made people disappear. Anybody who didn’t disappear melted into sludge as soon as it got anywhere near them. Howard Stark rigged some sort of container he called a “quantum prison” and they trapped it inside. Agent Carter sealed it away permanently within the SSR and made sure it stayed buried during the transition to S.H.I.E.L.D. They have no idea how that guy got to it or why he tried to release it. They don’t know who tried to release it before either. The only reason the trap activated in the first place is because Stark shocked it with something. But he refused to tell anyone what he used. Apparently, he said that an evil like that couldn’t ever get the chance to be around people again.”

Fox pried his eyes off of the display as Scully spoke and tried to rid himself of the tremors that had started crawling up his spine. He felt the memory of the pitch in his thoughts. The emptiness that had rooted in his head dug into him. He felt bile in his throat at how deep in the fugue the creature had gotten him. He shook himself and stood up to pace. Being able to feel his legs and the impact of them on the ground rooted him in place. He was fine. It was all fine. He may not have liked Coulson, but he’d Read him. He knew that he’d bury that thing as deep as it could go. It was all fine.

***

“I have bad news.”

Langly’s accent was thicker than normal and Fox felt himself tense.

“I’ll give you the better bad news first. Coulson didn’t say what you did, but he did say what you told him. You know as well as I do that Index head hunters don’t ignore anything like that. If Pierce or Fury decide to have someone look at you, you’re not going to know until it’s too late and neither are we. You’re going to have to bury your Reading deep unless you want to be on the Index.”

That wasn’t the worst news it could’ve been. Fox was almost back to normal. The distance between him and where the void had been and the time between everything was more than enough to make him feel human again. He’d been scrutinized before. It’d all be fine. He was being stalked anyway, what was another person following him around?

“What else?” Langly didn’t wait around on the phone.

“That asset that group was transporting? There was an accident with whatever they were transporting them in. Whoever that is, they’re loose somewhere in DC, and there’s no way to find them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay with this! I had it all written out back in August, but a lot of stuff happened and I couldn't get it out until now. The rest of this is probably not going to be betad, unfortunately, just to speed up the process. But, the wonderful human who was betaing for me is still checking in, so hopefully things won't wind up being too silly or stupid with this. I'm going to try to get the next chapter out in a timely manner. I have the first part written for it already, so hopefully it won't take me too long.

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a longform, extended project running the length of x files and mcu canon. I'm going to be playing fast and loose with both and will be pulling from the comics to fill in certain gaps on occasion. That said, I am not, by any means, an expert in any of the comics at all. I merely have a devotion to the mcu (even if I think there are some issues in how the story went with the most recent additions), and a most-definitely healthy addiction to the X Files, which I'm still working my way through at the time of writing the first few chapters. The plan is to take this through to at least I Want to Believe, and possibly Endgame, depending on how far off of canon I get. This will be centered around Mulder and Scully, but I'm going to feature The Lone Gunmen and Thor relatively frequently. Bucky Barnes will also be making frequent appearances because dammit, the man deserves better. 
> 
> The tags are not yet complete, and this includes the character tags as well. I will be tagging as I go, and I will try to remember to give additional warnings at the beginning of the chapters, but I will make mistakes along the way. If you see something, say something. That said, I will be delving into the dark parts of the canon. This includes the Red Room, HYDRA being manipulative garbage, the Syndicate being manipulative garbage, and all the canon typical pieces of trash. This is not a Sokovia Accords friendly work. That whole thing was rotten to the core, and the only way to fix them was to scrap them and start over. I am not Team Iron Man or Team Cap. I am firmly in the camp of Team They Should've Talked Like Adults.
> 
> That all said (and if you've read this far, thank you; I promise, I'm almost done), I'd like to thank my beta for kicking my butt and making my grammar and writing better than I could ever get it by myself. This may still be a pile of literary trash; but thanks to you, it's not a raging dumpster fire of literary trash. Any mistakes, inconsistencies, or errors are all mine. If you see any mistakes or anything that sticks out, please let me know. I'd ask that when you do so, to please keep it respectful.
> 
> So, all of that out of the way, welcome to The MCU Files.
> 
> The Truth Is Out There


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